Roman Noir
by Garmonbozia
Summary: 3/13  Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean and who is, in fact, quite a nice bloke, really.
1. Chapter 1

"Doctor." A pause, and then a giggle, "Doctor, wake up."

The _imperative_. First thing in the morning and she's going to start giving orders. And to _me_. After all I've done for her, after all the times I've proven myself the only person in the current company capable of or worthy to give orders. 'Wake up', like a programmed command to summon a primitive computer system out of sleep, 'Wake up'. No. No, I simply will not, as a point of principle, of morality, of hierarchy and moreover because the light hurts when I try to open my eyes and I'm still sleepy.

"No, seriously, Doctor. You have to see this."

I resist.

"_Please_?"

That's a bit better. I open one eye, find it sore and constricted and bleary and try the other. The other is a great improvement. Mostly what I am looking at is a dishevelled version of last night's Pond, with the curls in her hair slightly wild and tugged up on one side and what I am assured is a 'smoky eye' smoking its way towards her ear. Still giggling too, which is quite nice to wake up to. I should get a recording, set an alarm. Not that I ever need an alarm. I could wake up to it and then just roll over until I'm good and ready to get up, which I'm not right now, but there is something she very much wants me to see.

I reach up to move her out of the way. My hand is strangely watery and detached. It does everything I tell it, but one inch down and two to the left of where I tell it to.

I see what she wanted me to see. And I too giggle.

The murky Los Angeles sunrise is pinkening over the chlorine green pool, in the centre of which, atop an inflatable crocodile, is the matching bookend to Last Night's Pond; Last Night's Mr Pond. With a five o'clock shadow and the neck of his dress shirt open and his long black tie trailing like a banner from a hand that has fallen into the water.

It is then that I remember that it is 1946, and that we slept on sun loungers in the back garden of Howard Hawks.

"Where did he get that?" I ask Pond. She lies back, laughing, shielding her eyes from the morning sun, and smiles.

"Tardis."

"I do not own an inflatable crocodile."

"Oh yes you do. You sent him out to get it."

"What? When?"  
>"When he was bored and you were flirting with… the real girl of whoever Gwen Stefani played in The Aviator..."<p>

"Jean Harlow? I was talking to Jean? How is she, at this point? I know ti doesn't end well…"

"I don't know, Doctor, you were the one flirting with her."

"_Talking_ to, married man, Pond."

"That's what _I_ said."

"Why don't I remember all this? …Why is the last thing I remember the smell of popcorn?"

Pond, with evident difficulty and the pain of a headache, sits up, reaches under the sun lounger and, after kicking all the fishtails of her dress out of the way, comes up with a matching clutch. And it _is_ a lovely match, and a lovely outfit. And when I ask where she got it she says again, "Tardis."

"I do _not_ own-"

"Yes," she says, "Apparently you do."

"_Why_ don't I remember-" Pond pulls out a mirror compact featuring a cartoon cat in diamante, which I can only presume she brought with her. My face, that other eye I was talking about, the one that was just that little bit dodgy before, is all purply and swollen and rugged-looking.

"Because Humphrey Bogart punched you in the face."

"Why?"

"Because you asked him to dance."

"…The video phone, you own a video phone, did you use the video phone? Is there phone-video of me being punched in the face by Humphrey Bogart?"

She starts to shake her head. The strength of my disappointment is such that it actually gives me the energy to sit up from the lounger, so that I can properly look her in the eye (and I do mean that singular) when I tell her how disappointed I am in her. "Too many people. They would have asked questions and been interested and other kinds of awkward things."

While nodding, I reach out and take the mirror from her, and as we converse I study my fresh new bruises. What I believe is called, 'a shiner'. I have a shiner. A shiner has been given unto me by Humphrey Bogart at a party at Howard Hawks' house. An event which is bitterly, salted-woundishly, not on video, of phone or any other kind. "You are very sensible and I am still disappointed. Pond?"

"Mmh?"

"Who were we last night?"

Pond grabs my face by the chin and turns me away from the mirror. Peering into each of my eyes and starting to smile, "Just how hard did Humphrey Bogart punch you in the face?"

"We went to a movie premiere in 1946, who did I say we were to get us in?"

She stops and tries to think. She tries so hard she makes her headache a little worse, winces and gives up. "Nope, no idea."

"Oh dear."

"What?"

"Come with me, if you will, through a little scenario, Pond. Mr Hawks wanders out of his fine, palatial home in the Hollywood hills, sunglasses on, Bloody Mary in hand. Spots three strangers sleeping in and around his pool. Him having been to the same party as us, his memory is a little foggy. And the one he approaches shows him a psychic paper reading something _completely_ different to last night."

"Oh," she murmurs. Starting to gather up her clutch and glittering fishtails.

"Yes."

"We should probably go before Mr Hawks does that."

"I concur."

There is a moment of silence, in which I know for a fact we are both thinking the same thing. We are about to raise our voices above this early morning hush, and it is going to hurt.

Then, in near perfect unison, the same weary 'don't-make-me-swim-out-there' tone, "Rory!"

Nothing. Of all the horribly selfish things to do when neither Amy or I is much of a mind to move, he does absolutely nothing. Not so much as flinches. Doesn't grumble, doesn't shout something embarrassing out of his dreams. Doesn't, as I had hoped he might, try to roll over and fall into the pool, that would be fun. Nothing. Of course, I know better than to say anything of the sort to his ever-faithful wife. She wouldn't like anything of that sort to be said.

No, what she'd rather do is pick up a handful of the gravel from the potted palm and hurl it at him, and mutter things under her breath that I, being a man of education and erudition, would not repeat.

When that doesn't move him, we share a glance, and confirm amongst ourselves that we are worried.

"Pond, on your right and behind you is a small shed, and leaning against it is a pole with a hook. We can accomplish what need be accomplished with minimum effort if you would lean back and pass it over to me."

She lies right back on the lounger again, grabs it from over her head. Sitting up, she feeds it hand over hand towards me. I take it hand over hand from her, edging to the bottom of my own lounger, and ease forward. And just, _just_, I can get the hook around the black plastic handle of the crocodile that came from the Tardis, whether I believe that or not, and start to draw Rory back in.

"I swear, if he wakes up, you're turning him over."

"I may well turn him over anyway for wilfully making trouble."

"Oh, yeah, Doctor, _wilfully_. Turn him over. No. Get him in, _tell _him you're going to turn him over, then turn him over." She only notices that I'm staring at her when she notices that Rory has stopped moving. "What?"

"…And I thought that was just my marriage. Anyway, I've reeled him in. Over to you."

Amy balks. She thinks I expect her to lift him. I knew that would happen. But she's funny when she's indignant. I haven't the heart to tell her otherwise. "For _what_?"

"Just think of him as a sleeping princess. While I try and remember where I parked the Tardis."

Grudgingly, she climbs down and kneels by him, rolls him from crocodile to tiles and starts to try and wake him. Meanwhile, I use the pole as a crutch in order to stand up and cast my eyes about. The Tardis is probably on the hill below the house, here at the back, where it will be relatively hidden on the rocks. Worst case scenario is – "Doctor." – we got a lift from the premiere to the party back here – "Doctor, please." – and my poor Tardis currently stands abandoned in downtown post-war Los Angeles, which simply will not – "Doctor!"

"_What_, Pond, do you want, when I am _thinking_!"

"He won't wake up."


	2. Chapter 2

Asleep.

That's all he is, is asleep. Not dead, not sick, not comatose, not under some kind of terrible hypnotic spell of some sort. Asleep. Rory is asleep.

Logically, I'm having a hard time accepting this, due to the total refusal on Rory's part to wake up. Waking up, of course, being an integral part of sleeping, much as smoke and fire or feathers and birds or texting and scones. No, that's wrong. That was the one that turned out to be wrong, wasn't it? Why not, I wonder, I think scones go perfectly well with texting. Never mind. Where was I? Oh, yes, Rory.

Well, he's not dead. Which has shut Pond up somewhat.

Somewhat, she is still going.

"Apology, Doctor? You take us out to apologize and this happens. I'm not even shocked. I am _not_ even _shocked_ anymore."

Apology. Yes. Because of that photograph of River with all those Silents, and that gun she held to Mr Pond's head. Me, apologizing on behalf of the wife, I had to take her parents out. Wherever they wanted.

Suddenly the headache and the bleariness of my _shiner_ doesn't feel so manly anymore. It's just annoying now that I'm trying to think.

"Amy, quickly, what happened yesterday? All of it, from the top-"

"What?"  
>"Faster-faster-faster."<br>"You came and you got us and you said wherever we want, so we said LA, movie premiere, and you said pick a film, and we did, and you took us to the wrong one-"

"I got the dates mixed up!"

"It's a time machine, we could have changed!"

"_The Big Sleep_ is the better film!"

"It doesn't make sense!"

"It's got Lauren Bacall!"

"Who you were _trying_ to meet, Doctor, I'm not _stupid_. So anyway, we watched a film that didn't make any sense, went to a party at Howard Hawk's house, where he proceeded to flirt with me relentlessly the _entire_ night, you tried to cop off with Gwen Stefani-"

"Jean Harlow."  
>"Whatever, and Rory got talking to some… guy from… wardrobe, I think he said."<p>

And there it is, sudden and perfect and everything I needed to know and to say all this quickly and succinctly I cry, "Aha!"

There is a machine in the medical room for just such an occasion. I am about to explain to Amy what the machine does, and what the occasion is. Possibly the other way round, so that one might make better sense in terms of the other. Then I remember what I left in my medical room last night. When I swore to myself that I'd just watch the film and then, when it came to the party, I'd leave the Ponds to enjoy themselves. Before I saw Jean.

I take off to see to that. Amy tries to take off and follow me. "_No_!" I tell her from the stairs. The suddenness, the sharpness of it, stops her. "No, you mustn't take your eyes off Rory, or something _unthinkable_ will happen."

Literally 'unthinkable'; I can't think of anything. She takes it, however, in typical, non-literal human fashion, and rushes back to him.

Rory, by the by, is propped up on one of the chairs. We had stood the crocodile next to him to dry out. I'm not sure just when we turned our backs, but in that time, he took hold of it again and pulled it close by the handles. It is bent in the middle and occasionally he addresses it as 'kiddo'.

The Little Ghost too is asleep. And it kicks, occasionally, like a dog that dreams of chasing rabbits. It's sweet, in a dog. It's rather charming, in a dog. Or so I always thought. Now I just feel sorry for any poor rabbit ever forced to witness that.

"I had almost forgotten about you," I say aloud, thinking to talk to its sleeping form. Unfortunately, it's a light sleeper, and even this wakes it. Nonetheless, I finish what I was saying, "It would have been nice to forget about you."

It is no longer shackled to the table, though it still wears the collar and chain. The chain rattles about after it as it backs away from me into the corner. "Don't worry, I haven't time for you just now." I am unaware whether or not it can see my mouth to read it, and I don't much care. I am looking under the countertop for the required machine, and listening for the metal rasp of the Little Ghost trying to grow a blade.

But I do make sure it sees my last edict as I leave the room. "You will be fed and otherwise dealt with when I am assured that the people I care about are safe and well. Is that quite clear?"

It nods. There has been something docile and obedient about its manner since the time when I left it with the heartbeats. I am, however, careful not to be swayed, not to imagine that I have one. There are species which, when they are very very angry or weak or threatened and at their most dangerous, play dead.

I worry about the Ponds. The Tardis, on this little jaunt, was to be used simply as transport. Now she will have to shelter us more permanently, and we must be safe and secure within her. I worry about Amy, and what the Little Ghost might do if it finds out about her. I worry about what I might do to the Little Ghost should such a thing come to pass.

So I take the time to stop and attach the chain of its collar to the leg of the table. Take the time to press the sonic to its temple and, in low changes of pressure rather than sounds, remind it that I can summon the very hearts of the Time Lords on a finger-snap.

Then I take the necessary machine and return to Amy. And to being somebody else entirely.

"Doctor, what is it?" she says. Not looking at me, of course. Still not taking her eyes off Rory, like I told her to. I tell her she can stop now. "What's the matter?"

"What's the matter, Pond? What's the matter? What's the matter is that there were no male wardrobe assistants working on _The Big Sleep_. Meaning that your soporific spouse's new drinking partner was as much an imposter as we were. Did he say what they discussed?"

She's lost. So that she'll have something to do and feel better, I give her a handful of adhesive anodes and point to Rory's head. Because they look like the kind of thing she already recognizes from science fiction, she understands that they are to be applied to the skin along his hairline, and starts to go about it. Through it all, telling me with the urgency of one delivering crucial information on the battlefield. "The people he'd come with, family, that sort of thing. Basic stuff."

"Ah, but Pond, 'basic stuff', or you, me and River?" Her face goes blank, shocked. "See? And this stranger, he didn't talk much about himself, am I right?"

The anodes are attached to a small, handheld monitor. Because I am studying this, Pond comes around to study it over my shoulder. "So come on then, detective. Who was the stranger really?"

White text begins to scroll on the little screen. Keeps coming and coming, and my voice is slow with trying to read it and explain to her at once. "The stranger, Pond, was a thief."

"And… all the liney-code stuff?" Pointing to indicate the decidedly elegant, custom-built, biologically-engineered, Rory-matched computer program the machine has turned up.

"That's where he goes to steal. And that's where we have to go to stop him."

Pond hesitates. She is about to say something incredibly stupid. And she knows this, but she has nothing else to say, and so she goes right on ahead with it. Pointing, again, this time to indicate the machine, a very simple bioprogram reader, "What… in there?"

"Don't be silly, Pond."

"Sorry."

"I'm going to write us into the code."

Because she doesn't understand my answer any better than her own, she balks. Gets indignant again. Which I never find any less amusing, and so I let her. "Yeah, because your version makes so much more sense."

I am _attempting_ to subtly interrupt a very delicate programming event, risking the absolute collapse into her beloved husband's mind of an entire beautifully crafted, evolving world, and she is ranting at me. Something about treating her like a child and just because I'm a genius and so on and so forth. All very flattering, even though she doesn't mean to be. So, softly, as I'm working, I move her along to the next chair, and sit her down, and sit down next to her against the railing.

Amy Pond is in full flow and rather formidable, so I don't interrupt. While she's still shouting at me (she has moved on, somehow, to talking about the crocodile now) I reach up and place one of the adhesive plates on her temple. Then, trying to time it with the end of a sentence so as not to cut her off, I pinch a little spot on her hand, and Amy goes to sleep.

There is a story about where I learned that little pinch. Propriety forbids I tell it.

But remind me to tell you the one about the C of E Bishop and the actress. That's a good one.


	3. Chapter 3

For the second time in the space of an hour, Amy wakes before I do. This time there's no gentle coaxing. No, she just grabs my arm and shakes, this time.

We have come out quite comfortably on two single beds in a small, red-painted room. There is a bedside table between us with a telephone. Overhead, a ceiling fan swings slow under a bare bulb. It's all very functional, but it's not quite what I programmed. I programmed a chandelier and a tiger pelt rug. Fur's not murder when it's all just binary. It's not the morality of it that worries me. It's the fact that I put it in and something else has taken it out.

Pond too; Pond's not wearing her spangly fishtail gown that suited her so well. Not that she doesn't suit the plaid-shirt-and-trainers combo, but that's rather more everyday.

It occurs to me that we really are standing in a very beautiful, very intelligent, very vital new world.

"Doctor, where are we, we're not in the Tardis anymore."

"Of course we are."

Pond's little face folds up angry at me and she points. "We just had this conversation about how you talk to me. On the Tardis. Where we're clearly not."

"No, we _are_, but we're also here. Only the us here, we're not really real. We're a kind of… virtual avatar of us."

Yes. 'Avatar'. That's twenty-first-century internet stuff, she'll get that.

"Like a video game," she says.

"No. But yes, if it helps you to think of it that way."

"And this is-?"

I look around me. It's patently obvious, down to the glow-in-the-dark fire escape plan on the back of the door. "This is a hotel room, Pond. And a rather less expensive one than I had intended."

"A virtual hotel room."

"Ah, yes, now you're getting it. A virtual hotel room in a virtual Los Angeles, or, well, no, not really, but yes, only as decided upon by your husband's mind." She was doing so well. Now I've lost her again and she hates me for it. "There is a thief," I begin again. This is probably the way I should have done it the first time. It's just such a chore to make sure everybody's all caught up with all these basic, obvious little things. "This thief would like to steal some information. In order to do this, he has placed a bioorganic computer program in Rory's mind-"

"Stop!" She's holding her head. Downright unfair, it seems to me, that her dress couldn't carry over from the real world, but her hangover can. "Explain."

"You know that old thing people say in your time about the brain basically being a big supercomputer and how you don't use most of it."

"Yes."

"Well it's complete and utter nonsense, but it's sort of how this works. Think of a virus. A virus is a computer thing, and a biology thing. Simple." It is clear from her expression that she doesn't think it's simple. But I've lost her so thoroughly now that she won't interrupt if I continue. She'll learn as she goes, I think. "Aside from this room, which I built, the whole world out there is a joint collaboration of the thief's program and the stuff in Rory's head. For instance – "

I pull her to the window and try to shoot up the venetian blind. It should just roll straight up. It doesn't. It's broken on one side. I lift it and hold it up so she can see out.

"Look at the street names."

She tries. But as she does she squints at something in the middle distance before the signage. And turns to look up at me. "My husband has a computer virus?" Answer this wrong, or indeed truthfully, and I have a good shot of getting killed. Which, as I will attempt to explain to her when she has a better understanding of the basics, would be no good thing.

"Fifth and Alameda, Amy. Los Angeles street names. Now look, and tell me what Rory's added on."

Pond sighs, and settles her mind to the task. She does that; like a bored child in school, nonetheless suspecting that I'm not doing this for fun, or as teachers as so fond of saying, for the good of my health. God knows it's not for the good of my health, I would have packed the whole companion game-of-soldiers in a _long_ time ago if I had but a single care for my health. Once she understands that she could potentially get something out of this and _applies_ herself, Amy is really rather gifted.

"The traffic lights!" she says first, and brightly, with new enthusiasm. "They've got three colours, they're British traffic lights." And now that she's started she rolls right on. Notices the mobile phones despite the distinct period setting (which is programmed down to the advertising posters in the shop windows and I really shouldn't fall in love with a program which stands to do so much damage but my _God_, it's beautiful). Notices that three of the cars parked along the street outside are Rory's famous favourite. Even notices that that glow-in-the-dark fire escape plan is from a holiday they spent in Edinburgh where the hotel was evacuated in the night.

Doesn't notice, until I point to them, all the posters. There's a billboard, some fly-posting down the walls, it's on the side of the bus shelter. A movie poster.

"That's… Doctor, that's-"

"A bad send-up of the poster for Gilda that was hanging up at Hawks' house last night, yes, I know."  
>"That's <em>me<em>."

"Oh, that. Yes, I know that too." She's caught staring out at herself. "He's got Amy on the brain," I tell her. Then, stupid of me, really, turn my back on her. Pace a few steps across the room talking about the source of the code, i.e. the Thief, how it's important we find the mechanism by which he gathers information and prevent him from leaving with any, etcetera.

I am _about_ to go to explain something very, very important when Amy, from the window, gasps, "Rory." And barrels past me. Out of the room. Down the hotel stairs. She's in the lobby before I know it's happening and start to follow.

I try to shout after her. She has to stop, and if she'd give me a second I'd be able to explain _why_, but she doesn't. This is that bloody love thing again. Keeps happening, you know. And it's never a good thing in these situations, you know. It sends people rushing off to certain death and throwing themselves in front of bullets and doing things for other people and not necessarily the right reasons.

Apparently, she saw him at a window across the street.

By the time she's figured out what door it is, I've caught up with her. Amy is at the foot of the stair when I grab her back around the corner and hold her quiet in the shadow of the wall.

So that the Amy at the top of the stairs doesn't see her.

The Amy at the top of the stairs has just left the office of a private detective. She is the film star Amy from the billboards, and dressed as such. My Pond sees her, and I don't have to keep her quiet anymore. Finally, she's lost for words.

The Private Detective follows her into the hall. Locking the door behind them. Hidden in a rain coat and fedora hat.

Can't help it; I think, 'Good idea'.

The Private Detective is saying, "I'm going to do my best to help you, Mrs Pond. I'll get that ring back, and the guy who took it from you's going away for a long time."

"Thank you. I don't know what I would have done without you, Detective."

The dialogue, frankly, makes me wince. And I look down at Amy, surprised she's not pulling her usual faces at this kind of sickening display. Amy, though, just looks sad. Apparently she has other things on her mind.

The Detective is escorting the Other Amy down the stairs, one hand at the small of her back. Very nice. And says, "Now, what'd I tell you about calling me Detective?"

"That 'Detective' was your cop father. My apologies, _Roman_."

On that word, in perfect light, they come to the foot of the stairs, and he tips his head. Detective Rory 'The Roman' 'Roman' Williams Pond.

Amy, my Amy, wants to cry out some contracted version of that name. So I have to pull her back again, and clap a hand over her mouth before she can. Have to hold her while she watches them leave, in one of the Favourite Cars. Then I let her go.

Amy spins on her heel, literally turns on me, shoves me back with both hands. Stronger than she looks, you know, even when she's virtual.

"What was that about?"

I try to look on the bright side. And in case she can't see it, I decide to lay it out for her. "Well, we've got the jist now! The Thief has made the people he wants to know about part of the program. By stealing items of _importance_ from them, such as that-other-Amy-who-just-left's ring-"

"He gains all the information Rory's mind has about them."

Which rather takes me aback. And I have to stop and then say, "Well… _yes_."

"I keep telling you, Doctor, I'm not as thick as you think." She gets this strength in her stance, in the line of her jaw. I've seen it before; with the Angels, when we thought we were saving her daughter. Once, even, in a time that never happened anymore. A pang of guilt, of conscience, and I feel as though I should concede to her. Should, perhaps, have conceded back on the Tardis.

"What I was asking you, _Doctor_," she says. Spits, even. Yes, she spits it, and I hate to hear it. "Was why I'm not allowed to talk to my own _husband_."

This is what I would have explained to her. I would, very probably, have been a lot more glib about it, and treated it as though it doesn't matter. And that would have been wrong of me. So gently, gravely, I tell her, "Because you could kill him, Pond. Kill us all, in fact. You haven't questioned, yet, why we couldn't wake him; a human mind can't handle both the real world _and_ the program. If we bring the real world in, if we remind him that it's out there, this whole thing implodes. Collapses in on him. It would do untold damage to Rory's brain. You asked me before if he had some kind of computer virus. Amy, we're it."


	4. Detective Story, pt 1

_I drive her home. I know I shouldn't, but I do. This isn't a night for dogs to be out, never mind her, and especially not when she's so shook up. _

_ Steal a woman's wedding ring. I hope they throw the book at the rat when I catch him. I hope they do it before I get a chance to hang him and get myself in trouble. And I would, y'know. Hang him, I mean. He stole her wedding ring so she's not wearing it, and every time I look over her hand is resting on her knee with no wedding ring to remind me of things that are important, like her husband. Hawks, his name is. She kept her maiden name for business purposes, the name she was known under when he discovered her. He put her in that movie everybody talks about, the one where she wore that dress slit up to the hip and peeled off that opera glove and they say a man had a heart attack in the third row at one showing. I don't buy that hype._

_ But yeah. Hawks. The husband. I have to remember him all by myself without the ring to trigger me, so I think about him and not her. He's the movie director. He's a little crazy, in his own way. Richer than all kinds of kings thrown in together. Big house in the Hills. Powerful man. Probably treats his wife more like a work of art, a frame of film, than the woman she is._

_ That last one's not a fact. I ran out of facts about Howard Hawks. I've got a weird, foggy feeling; part of my mind is telling me I met him once. The rest is tougher and smarter and knows that never happened. Safe to say I'm not the kind of guy Mr Hawks hangs out with._

_ "You've gone quiet, Mr Roman."_

_ The drive seems to have calmed her. It's the moving and the lights and the patter of rain on the soft-top. She's turned in her seat now, lounging against the door. Twining a heavy red curl round one long white finger. A finger that doesn't have a wedding ring on it. It's not the right finger, but even if it was it wouldn't have the ring. _

_ Just because it's not there doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I can't forget that. Can't. Married, Roman, she's married. To some hood that just got lucky, and I don't mean on his money or his big house in the Hills._

_ "What do you want me to say, Miss Pond?"_

_ "I want you to call me Amelia."  
>"Alright."<em>

_ "And I want you to tell me again how you're going to get my thief."_

_ "You know I will."_

_ "I want you to say you'll come in and see where he stole it from. I've made enough detective pictures to know you have to inspect your crime scene."_

_ And I want to know why you're doing this, sister, but even if I ask you you're not going to tell. I know enough to know that'd just take all the fun clean out of it. But the longer I say nothing the wider, the sweeter, the stronger her smile. It doesn't move, doesn't change; just gets better, all but glows off her face, the way it glows off the screen and takes hold of your heart, just anybody, just anybody it shines on._

_ "Is your husband home, Mrs Hawks?"_

_ "What'd I tell you about calling me Amelia…"_

_Mrs Hawks, which is her married name, shows me to her private lounge upstairs. The carpet and curtains and upholstery are all pristine white, and just standing there I feel grubby and wrong. Unworthy, almost. I go too fast to stand over where the rain through the broken window has ruined it all already. I guess I leave footprints, but I don't look to see. _

_ I look at the broken glass, the latch of the former French window, the little alabaster tray on the dresser she says the ring was stolen from. _

_ There. Done. Crime scene inspected, now get out of this woman's personal space before her husband gets home. She said he was shooting on location tonight. I don't know what that means and I didn't want to ask and sound stupid. Seems to me all shooting has to happen some location or another. Certain kind of shooting and we get to call it another kind of crime scene. _

_ Thank God there's no blood here. In all this white it would have looked a hundred times worse than it already is._

_ "So, Roman," smiles Amelia Pond. When she smiles, it's hard to think of her as Mrs Hawks, "How do you think the brute got in?" _

_ "Through this window here, I'd say." And I do say. I say that right out loud before I really think about it, and I don't think about it all until I hear her laughing at me for it. "All due respect, Amelia," I say, using her preferred name because she used mine, "but there's nothing here you didn't tell me about at the office."_

_ "But it's nicer." She sits down on a chaise-longue that is white to its carved claw feet, and pulls her legs up. "Isn't it? And there's _always_ champagne on ice downstairs."_

_ I've been offered a drink. It would be rude to refuse._

_ Wedding ring Hawks married married married. There's always champagne on ice because her husband has enough money to crush me down to powder and have me made into a diamond and set in a brand new wedding ring for her. So I give a little laugh and try to shrug._

_ "Listen, sister, I know you've had kind of a shock tonight, but-"_

_ And Amelia, she sort of shrugs too. She rolls over onto her back on the chaise, one hand hanging languid by her face and says, "Fine." No change in her voice. Just as quiet and comfortable as it was before. But she's an actress. Pretty good one too. So that means nothing. _

_ "Don't be like that," I say. She gets up, goes to the dresser and starts taking the pins from her hair, brushing it out._

_ "Like what?" she says. "It's no big deal, Detective."_

_ Detective this time. Not Roman. No big deal. _

_ I want to tell her it's nothing to do with her face or any of the rest of her, or even about how she is as a person, and it's not about me. Trust me, there is no hold up on my end. It's just all the stuff in between, and this whole situation. Too much like taking advantage. And probably if I looked a little harder there'd be words for that, but she's taking her make-up off now with a wipe and it's pretty clear we're finished. _

_ "I'll call as soon as I know anything."_

_ "Good," she says. She stops her ritual and looks up at me. Casts me that smile and I wonder how easy she can turn it on like that. "Now don't forget, you told me you'd get him."_

_ "Yeah," I say, "You know I will."_

_ And quick as I can, I try to pick my way out across the footprints I left on the way in. _


	5. Chapter 5

The hotel room I wrote into the program is the only place Rory can't go. Can't even see it or know it exists. Doctor one, Thief nil.

As we walk through the lobby, which the thief had already put here, the man at the desk, who is fat and appropriated purpled around the nose and cheeks with a walrus moustache and a bolo tie, lifts his head, studies us with disdain and looks down again. The program knows we're not part of the original code and it doesn't like us for it.

I know he's a Thief, I know he could still potentially destroy vast swathes of Rory's mind like bulldozed rainforest, these things I know. But this is a man that I must shake warmly by the hand when we meet.

And we will, because if I don't, that means I haven't caught him, and that means Amy will take off her shoe and beat me about the head and neck with it. She told me so. I believe her. She tells me so again at the door of the hotel room when I have to stop and write us in a key to get back in. Hadn't quite thought of that, and this, in her eyes, is unforgivable.

"Why do we have to come back here anyway? Shouldn't we be following him, staying with him?"

"Amy, Rory is in his element. This is his mind; he can do no wrong. Now if I a detective who can do no wrong is being followed he will know, since he can do no wrong, and he will outsmart and outwit his followers, by virtue of his inability to do any wrong. We have discussed what will happen should he catch us."

She sighs, and hangs against the wall in a way that makes me think she might sink down against it if she stands much longer. I gently pick her up by the arm and bring her inside. The same heavy way, just as I expected, she sinks down on the end of the bed. "So what can we do?"

"Amy, who would you say is smarter, Rory or me?"

Like a robot triggered by the phrase, her face goes blank, and she says in clipped, practiced syllables, "You both display equal merit and ability in various aspects which sometimes coincide."

"Of course I am. So trust me. Lift that phone between the beds and call the Tardis."

I don't know if it's because I brought her here, made her the Rory Brain Virus, or because I approached a perfectly true little fact as regards perfectly unbiased IQ scores in a roundabout and perfectly polite way, but she watches me. Eyes me the whole time as she eases around to the side of the bed, takes up the old dial phone and rolls in the number.

No. It's not either of those things. More to it than that, something in the eyes that watches and wants more from me, the answer to a question I can't figure out. "What?" I say.

But the phone is ringing and it's time to get up.

I wake up smothered in night sky.

No, wait, no I don't; it's the fishtails of Last Night's Pond's spangly, midnight blue dress. Because I fell asleep by her feet I have fallen across them. And she jerks when she wakes and kicks me right in the shiner. Which reminds me that I have one and makes waking up that little bit nicer.

"This is the Tardis." The words 'Well done' get far too close to my lips to be comfortable, but I _do_ stop them. "Why are we back on the Tardis?"

"Because the phone rang, and we woke up. But _you're_ going back to sleep."

"Why?"

"Because Rory-" I begin. Amy, to make sure she's keeping up, points over at the Rory in the next chair, cuddling close and cosy with his crocodile. "No, Detective Rory, Mr Roman, because he's not at his office. He went away, with Movie Star Pond. You're going back to sleep so that you can break into Detective Roman's office and find out what Movie Star Amy told him about the Thief who stole her ring." Amy is slumped, and staring at me with big, empty eyes, not even _trying_ to be helpful and go back to sleep. "_What_?"

"My head hurts."

"Well, I could hardly have missed the fact that you're feeling a little bit delicate, Pond!"

"That's not what I meant!"

"Sleep! Office! Call if you have any problems!"

"Fine!"

_"Fine_!"

"Doctor!"

"What?"

"I'm angry now, I can't sleep!"

So I pick up her hand and give her the pinch again. Amy drops off instantly and peacefully, with a much more suitable little smile on her face. "There's 'can't'," I tell her, "and there's 'won't'."

It must be a new record. I have had no more time than exactly what it takes to straighten a sleeping woman to a more comfortable position, place a handkerchief between a man's face and a plastic crocodile to prevent chafing and take one breath on my own time, when she calls.

It was that breath, wasn't it? It was doing something for me when Rory's potentially in danger. I should know better.

"Yes, Pond?"

"The crocodile's here. It's standing in the corner."

"He fell asleep on it. It makes sense that it would bleed through. Are you looking?"

"Yeah, there are notes and stuff here, I'm going through it."

"Then you're doing very well. I told you to call if you had _problems_."

"I do."

"Well?"

"I'd like to know what exactly _you're_ doing, Doctor."

You know, I don't like her when she has a hangover. She gets very snippy with me. "Being smart. Do the same." I want to hang up at that. I want her to know how I feel because she feels it. I try. But then I feel guilty and wait until she accepts my point, and hangs up on me.

I slightly lied. I'm not being smart yet. I will be in a minute.

Right at this moment, all I have is a question; do I know anybody that Rory's never met (yes) who I can get hold of very, very quickly, without moving the Tardis from this time or place? Not really, no. The smart part will come when I figure out an answer to this question.

There is _one_ answer in my mind. But it doesn't feel very smart, so that can't be it. And yet my feet would appear to be taking me up the stairs. Down the console room gallery. Down the corridor. To the door of the medical room.

Oh, surely not. This is surely not the smart idea about the saving of the day with the secret weapon and the big reveal and not being beaten about the head and neck with Amy's shoe. This cannot be it.

From inside the room, the Little Ghost senses me at the door. It walks out to the end of its chain and leans to look back out at me. It has different concerns to me; it brings a hand up, to where a mouth would be behind the mask, and makes a tipping gesture. Universal sign-language for water.

Oh, this is the idea, isn't it? This is as close to smart as I'm getting right now. Well, that's depressing.

I scare it back from the door with the heartbeats. It doesn't, in fact, appear to be that scared anymore. Wary, yes, and still seeming to believe that more and worse might follow. But it doesn't cower anymore, which is a pity. I rather miss the cowering.

"You," I say, when I step in. And I point to it, to make sure I definitely have its attention. It stands alert, with its chin tipped up. This is the closest to defiant I've seen it, right when I need it to be at its most co-operative.

I lie. It's alright, it's in the rules. "Listen to me, the other Time Lords are coming." And now it cowers. Reels back, eyeing the open doorway behind me, raising an arm up to its face in defence. Much better. I wait until it looks at me again. "But I can keep them away. Do you want me to keep them away?" It nods so quick and so hard that the mask threatens to shift, and its hands fly even quicker, even harder to readjust it. "Do you want water, and food, and not to suffer terrible Teselecta pains for the remainder of your days?" I'm not sure how much of that it understood, but it nods again, with the same fervour. "Then you're going to have to earn it."


	6. Chapter 6

The Little Ghost wakes in the hotel room. The sudden change of surroundings puts it on edge. I can tell now, when it's on edge. There's that little schnik sound of the blade tips pushing through the scabs on its forearms.

"Ah-ah-ah!" I don't think it watching my lips warn it, but it senses it. The blades stop, too short of it to break off, but too short to do any damage.

The eyes beyond the mask give away the hidden expression. It is exactly the same as Amy's was when first she woke up in the program. The difference is, if I could have gotten a word in sideways, I would have explained it to Amy. The Little Ghost does not need to know. I have no time and it does not deserve that I make any. I indicate for it to follow.

It does. Wordlessly, and a nice safe step behind. Note to self, keep 'The Time Lords are coming' for special occasions.

Outside Detective Roman's office, I turn around. I mean to attach the chain of its collar to the banister, so I can leave it there while I introduce the idea to Amy. That's when I realize there's no chain, no collar even, here in the Program. This is very odd indeed, when I'm absolutely sure I made a point of writing it into the Little Ghost's code. I pull out the sonic to correct this. The Little Ghost puts its hands to its throat, then joins them out in front, like a prayer.

International sign language for 'please'.

And it seems to know what I wanted; it backs up to the wall, crouches down, and holds on to the banister bracket. Staying there. Not letting go. Please don't put the chain on it again. As I back off by a step, it tucks its head away against its shoulder. Perfect surrender. I nod and knock at the office door.

"Amy?"

"You can come in if you're going to talk to me properly."

"It's a break-in, Amy, I can come in anyway." But I'm still outside, albeit with my hand on the door handle.

"Come in," she relents.

Detective Roman's office is almost a perfect copy of the one from last night's film. That is the desk that Lauren Bacall sat on, here is the rug on which Old Quick-Fists Bogart stood to be searched, there in the corner is the crocodile upon which Mr Pond fell asleep. But the record going around on the old gramophone is not Billie Holiday or Louis Armstrong. It's Aerosmith's _Don't Want To Miss A Thing_, and Amy is staring at it like the turning vinyl has hypnotized her.

"First dance?" I guess.

"At the school dance and then at the wedding."

"Just because he's hanging around with another Pond doesn't mean she's not still Pond. What did you find?"

Still looking at the record player, humming under her breath, she nods back at the desk behind her. A scattering of notebook pages, details of Detective Roman's meeting with the movie star. There's an address, from which the all-important ring was stolen. There's a description of the thief. There are notes in the margin, warning himself against even getting involved. But apparently he went right on ahead.

Nurse, centurion, bodyguard, private detective. There's noticing a theme and then there's having it stuffed down your throat.

I am about to suggest using the description of the thief to scour the code for him, trying to hunt him down ahead of Detective Roman. I am prevented from doing this by a thunderous crash from the floor above. A loud and unnecessarily melodramatic cry of 'Stop! Thief!', the kind of voice that summons in the mind images of mad maiden aunts flapping at parrot cages and crazed horror-film professors running amok in their laboratories.

Pond and I exchange one glance, then rush together from the room. Pond stops too short, though, and I walk into the back of her. It was the sight of the Little Ghost that stopped her. "I'll explain later," I say, and start her up the stairs with a little push. And I point at the Little Ghost and tell it, "Stay there."

Pond and I rush up another flight of stairs. A door halfway along the corridor hangs open, and by the state of the lock has clearly been forced.

Pond gets there first, and does that stopping-thing again. This time there's no snappy little hiss when I step on her heels. No, Amy is laughing far too hard for that. Not so hard she can't shove me out of the way. I peer around the door to see why.

The owner of the mad, yelpy voice, the cry-for-help haver-of-crises, is a tall man with really terrible hair, in an ill-fitting tweed jacket. Amy is obviously of the opinion that this is how I have been represented in the program by Rory's mind. Obviously there has been some kind of mistake. I've gotten confused with somebody. Perhaps Rory had some suspicion that someone was planning to steal information from his sleeping mind, and purposely mixed me up with somebody else, in order to confuse the facts that would be passed on.

That, of course, would take monk-like concentration and a superior intelligence. Not that I'd ever question Rory that way.

I stretch out and slap Pond's arm. "That's not funny."

"Oh, I beg to differ."

"Go and talk to him," I tell her. Peering around the door again, I notice that the window is open, and that there are footsteps outside on the fire escape. So I'm halfway down the stairs when Pond quips back, "But Doctor, we _are_ talking." Far enough away to pretend I didn't hear that, though I do shout back to let her know I'm pretending I didn't hear it, which rather defeats the purpose.

At the point on the stairs at which I should pass the Little Ghost, there is nothing. No, the Little Ghost, rather than staying where it was as it was told to do, is outside the front doors, rolling in the river of the gutter with another figure I can only assume is the thief. When they're both dressed in black, only the Little Ghost's mask to differentiate them, it's hard to tell who's winning.

By the time I cross the lobby and get outside, it's over.

Not that I respect the Little Ghost in any way, shape or form, but it shocks me to see it left behind in the gutter. Rolling there, with both hands balled up in fists and held across its chest. The Thief has gotten up, and is running away. But he limps. He's clutching his sides. Whatever else happened, whatever its motives, the Little Ghost got its hits in first.

I go to it. Careful, at first, to keep my distance. But then its eyes meet mine. It sits up. The fists unfold a little, and it holds out something. A wet, raggedy scrap of cloth. And when I go closer, when I lean down to inspect it, I see that it is a bowtie. Not like mine. Cheaper and tackier than mine and nowhere near so cool. But a bowtie, nonetheless.

"Did you get that from that man?"

It nods, and points at me. At my top pocket. I reach in and hand it the little notebook. 'Was think him got you', it writes to me.

There is a spark, if you are the kind to believe in these things, of something genuine behind the mask. I, fortunately, am not of the kind to fall for these kind of things. I snatch the bowtie and the notebook back from it and stuff them away. The Little Ghost stays in the gutter and hangs its head.

A moment longer and there might have been guilt. Thankfully, Amy comes reeling out the door with perfect timing, baying quite-uncalled-for hyena laughter to the skies.

"Doctor! Doctor, you have to meet Rory Brain You. He's like a British Doc Brown, and he doesn't know where he's put anything, and he collects hats with bullet holes in them from eBay, and-"

"_Honestly_," I interject, primarily to stop the endless tide of untruths and horrible things spewing forth from her lips, sullying the purity of her beautiful soul with idle scuttlebutt, "you are _so_ selfish. And what if 'Rory Brain Me', as you so eloquently put it, were to mention _Me_ Me to Rory Brain Rory? And it all collapses down, with us inside, and the _world_ ends, Amy? So. Selfish."

She pauses. Thinks about that, with a look of appropriate remorse. Then evidently remembers something that happened upstairs and the grin begins to return.

I try to cut in before she can laugh again. "_What _was stolen?"

"A bowtie."

Not once do I look anywhere near the Little Ghost. "And what did you tell m-_Him_?"

"That there was a very good private detective in the building and that he should take it to him next time he's here."

"Well done, Pond."

"Okay, _now_-" Oh, not this tone. Please not this tone. This is the bargaining tone, the laying down of rules and challenges tone. This never ends well. Not just for me, but it always leads to fights and awkward moments, and things which _really_ don't have to happen in my life or on the Tardis, but seem to happen fairly regularly. "I answered two questions for you. So you have to answer two questions for me."

See, there she goes with that imperative again. Pond's Irresistable Imperative. I shrug, inviting her on to say what she will.

"Why does Rory Brain You live in the same building as Rory Brain Rory has an office? Why are there homes and offices together?"

"So that it makes sense. So that Brain Me has a reason to be aware of Brain Rory, to approach him rather than any other detective in all the world."

"But it _still_ doesn't make sense if-"

"Pond, think of when you dream. And there's a giant carrot chasing you down the road. Do you ever stop, in your dream, and think, 'Hold on, carrots can't run and at any rate I'm not afraid of carrots'? No. You just run, and get chased, and are scared of a giant carrot."

Amy leans back, lifts an eyebrow. "You dream about being chased by a giant carrot?"

"Enormous. And the road is never-ending and full of very steep hills. And sometimes it's not a carrot, it's a cauliflower. My point is, it doesn't matter whether or not the logic is good, provided there is logic."

She gives me a look, that implies a comment about how I live life more generally. I can hear it coming, and I thank her for biting it back. We both know it happened, though. We both nod to acknowledge it, and we both move on. I, to planning our next move, Amy to pointing at the Little Ghost. She opens her mouth to speak.

"Ah-ah-_no_. _No_, Pond. Homes and offices together, that was question one. Do I dream of giant carrots, question two. Now," I say, aware of using the same tone with which Pond delivers her ultimatums. To get the Little Ghost's attention again, I skim the rainwater off the road with the side of my shoe across its legs. "Both of you listen very carefully to what we're going to do. Well," addressing Pond, "_You_ listen." Addressing the Little Ghost, "You watch."


	7. Detective Story, pt 2

_I leave the Hawks House behind in the Hills and drive. Just drive. After a while all the scenery starts to look the same, and I come to terms with the fact that there don't seem to be any other cars on the road. Switch off. Just sit back and turn the wheel when the road turns._

_ And try and figure out what in hell just happened, why a woman I'd known for less than an hour had suddenly thrown herself at me, and not just any woman but _her_. And what about the whole thing had felt right and familiar. It's not right and it couldn't have been familiar. But it felt right, and familiar. _

_ No. To hell with it. I know what the facts are and the facts are it was wrong and it's never happened before. To hell with it. Anyhow, I've got a case now. _

_ A sane and sensible man with his head in a good place would go home and sleep first. Me, I can't face it. I'm going back to the office. Look at the details I got from Ms Pond, try and figure out what this guy wanted, where he's gone. The one thing I noticed in that room, aside from the white, was that there were plenty of other jewels to steal. Bigger and fancier and tonnes of them. So that rules out personal gain. _

_ Ms Pond couldn't think of a person in the world who'd want her wedding ring for any other reason. So that's my first job, is to come up with a suspect. I didn't want to tell her at the time that her not having any enemies puts all the people she's ever called friend in the frame, but that's about where we stand. I should get online, check out who's working on her new movie with her. Who knew Mr Hawks was shooting-on-location tonight. Find out what shooting-on-location is so I know if anybody says it to me again. _

_ There's no computer in the office._

_ I'm thinking that like it's a new fact, but of course it's not. It's my office. I go there every day. There's never been a computer. _

_ This quiet little voice, not my own, in the back of my mind says, "Roman, mate, you're too smart for your own good."_

_ Most of my mind says louder, "You're losing it."_

_ I get out of the car at the kerb and go in. The doorman looks up at me in just the same way he always does and gives the same grunt of acknowledgement, and goes back to today's paper. Always today's paper. Makes it last all day. Always turns the page as I walk up the stairs._

_ What's wrong with this picture? No, nothing, everything's exactly the way it's always been, the way it is every day. Why do I feel like something's wrong with the picture?_

_ It's a bad feeling I've got, sitting on top of my stomach like a poison bullfrog. _

_ Got to get a hold of myself. I've got a bad feeling because there's nothing wrong? Says more about the state of my life than I like to think about. I'm more than a touch bitter as I put the key in the door. Through the frosted glass, the shadow of the desk, with no computer, the way it's always been. The right way._

_ "Mr Williams!" _

_ This voice cries my name out from the stairwell. I don't turn to see. I know who it is. Before he can reach me, I knock my head once against the door and can't help but mutter, "Not tonight, oh God, not by all that's good and true, not tonight, not this guy." But it is, and I wasted good time muttering when I should have been sneaking inside and crouching behind the door until he went away. _

_ He'll want something, you know. He always wants something. And you never see it again. Anything he gets off you, you never see the damn thing again. _

_ This guy, I don't know his name, he lives upstairs. Which is kind of ironic, considering the lift does not go to the top floor, if you get my meaning. He's a doctor of some kind, and you have to address him as such or he just hits the roof. I've never much known what to make of him._

_ I mean, he looks harmless. In the tweed jacket with the elbow patches and the salmon pink shirt, with all the stupid hats, with the hair, that goddamn dickey-bow, he _looks_ harmless. But it's about fifty-fifty, when you meet people who know him. You've got the fifty who think he's a hoot, life and soul of the party, best guy they ever done met. And you've got the fifty where you say his name and they don't want to talk anymore. _

_ You've got a little crossover in the middle where all you have to do is say his name and they can't wait to tell you everything you want to know and more._

_ Like I say, I don't know what kind of doctor he is._

_ "Doctor!" I say, like I'm glad to see him, "Love to talk, but I've got a case to work on and-"  
>"Suspend it!" He gets fervent, all bulging eyes and hand gestures, bobbing up on the balls of his feet. "Shelve it, back-burner it, put it away at once, you have a much more important task ahead of you!"<em>

_ Last night I couldn't have got a paying job for all the diamonds in Siam. That, maybe, might-could go some way towards explaining why I throw this particular rope around my neck and kick the chair away. "What's the matter, Doctor?"_

_ "It's gone! Stolen, spirited away, _purloined_, ooh, that's a good word, purloined, haven't heard that one in a while, I should use it more often, bring it back, as it were-"_

_ It's round about this point I realize I've committed myself to hear the rest and curse my charitable heart. "_What_'s gone?"_

_ And for this, he lowers his voice to a bass of great dignity, and strength drawn up out of the depth of his soul. Bottom lip trembling, "My bow tie."_

_ I shut my eyes. Start turning the key in the office door again. I point without looking. "It's round your neck."_

_ "Not _this_ one. Great Scott, man, I'm a doctor! I'm hardly an imbecile." I decline comment on that one and tell him there's a reasonable menswear place around the corner. "No, no, no, Mr Williams, I don't think you understand. This tie was of a certain… significance, if you will. It had… sentimental value."_

_ "All due respect, Mr… _Doctor_, but it's a tie, how much-"_

_ "Bowties are cool." The voice is his, yeah. But the words sound wrong coming from him. Too controlled, or poised, convincing, something like that. I'm not looking at him when he speaks, so I can't be sure, but the reflection behind me in the window, it doesn't look like his lips move. And his face looks blank, gone. I glance back and he doesn't look like that anymore, he looks animated and stupidly fierce again, like he did before. _

_ And the words 'sentimental value' chime with something else I've heard tonight. A wedding band's got sentimental value. _

_ So slow, behind me, I open the door. "Why don't you come in, Doctor, tell me all about it."_

_ I'm thinking how I'm likely going to regret this, how this can't be for the good and there's no way in hell these two thefts can be connected, unless there's a hell of a lot more I don't know about the madman upstairs than I thought. Which is possible, I guess, but there's still no way in hell these two cases could be connected. And yet here I stand, letting this lunatic into my space, getting that bad déjà vu feeling again. Like letting him in against my better judgement is something I do on a regular basis. That's not true. That's not true and I shouldn't be thinking that._

_ The door clicks open. The Doctor points so suddenly over my shoulder that finger would knock me out if I didn't duck sideways. "Look out! Thief!" he cries. "Stop! Thief!" _

_ But they don't look like much of a thief. The window's been forced, yeah, and there's a person there. But they're just sitting on the window-ledge. And under their arm, they've got this giant, green plastic crocodile, that squeals when they lift their hand to wave._

_ They're dressed so I can't say male or female. Wearing this weird, blank white mask with big black eyes. _

_ I don't need this. Tonight, I just do not need this. _

_ When this person, this maybe-or-not thief, is done waving, they roll themselves over the window-ledge and out onto the fire-escape._

_ "Where'd they get the crocodile?" I wonder out loud._

_ The Doctor grabs me by the suit lapels and tries to shake me. He hasn't the strength in his arms, but bless his heart, he tries. I look down at his white knuckled hands and he shouts in my face, "Have you lost your mind, man? That's yours! It sits in the corner behind the hat-stand."_

_ Hat-stand. That triggers something; the stupidest thought I ever had – 'There's a hat-stand back home'._

_ Anyway, the Doctor is still shaking me, and apparently the person with the mask is the person who stole his bowtie, so I have to go after them. Apparently. He's telling me this and I'm not in the mood to give him an argument, so I go. I follow that person's trail down the fire escape to the street. But in the pounding rain, I can't hear footsteps, and with the shadows everywhere I can't pick one out._

_ I stand, and look about me. _

_ On up the street, bouncing around the mouth of an alley, the giant crocodile finds the rush of gutters and tries to sail past me. I get him by the tail and turn him over. Big cartoon eyes, big smile. Looks like a decent kind of fella. _


	8. Chapter 8

Pond made me write an umbrella and some wellies into the code for her. An umbrella. Who carries an umbrella in an oh-so-beautifully realized 1940's world? Especially when it's been filtered through a twenty-first century mind into an empty and anachronistic dystopia through perpetual evolution and adaptation to the factors imposed by Rory's mind. An _umbrella_.

For the record, she looks sweet, and dry, but silly.

I wrote myself a fedora and I look rather dashing.

I wasn't going to give in about that umbrella, you know. But I thought it might shut her up. Periodically, she asks me one of two questions. Hold on a second, I think we're just cycling back to the first.

"Doctor, where are we walking to?" And do you notice, dear friends, that there is another question hidden in that one? She is asking too why it is that we have to walk. Since our little altercation over the Little Ghost's head, she's been practicing that, and she's getting rather good. But that's not the reason I don't like her asking that first question. I don't like it because I've already answered it twice.

"We are walking to the _Thief_, Amy. We are following his trail."

"What kind of trail can we follow in the rain!"

Why on earth she thinks I'm carrying my little code-writer along with us and why every step we take follows the direction it last beeped in, I just do not know. What precisely we are doing would be difficult to explain and technical and full of terms and concepts with which Amy would be unfamiliar. I make it basic, and tell her that what we're essentially doing is retracing the steps of the program itself, which must ultimately lead us to the programmer, i.e. the Thief.

It's another one of those things that isn't really like that, but that's the easy version.

And because she was sly and hid it, I don't answer her why we have to walk.

So that's her first question over and done with. We both know what's coming next. She looks to me and opens her mouth. I hold up a hand and pretend to be listening to our little guide machine beeping.

"It's not beeping."

"It is, you're just not listening."

"Doctor-"

"_Don't_, Amy."

"I'm going to keep asking until you tell me."

"Oh, then by all means, Pond, keep asking."

"Who was that girl?"

"Nobod- wait, what _girl_?" The question has changed. The question used to be, 'Who was that back at Rory's office?' or, rather more bluntly, 'Who else did you bring into my husband's delicate timebomb mind?' Who is the _girl_ she's talking about, where did this come from? "Who? The Little Ghost?"

"_Aha!_" she cries, triumphant. "Little Ghost, who's she?"

"The thing that was in the gutter before? It's not a girl, Amy, it's… It's a _thing_."

She tips her umbrella back so I can see her disbelieving me, see the raised brow that means I can't possibly be right. She should know better than to give me that look. "I saw her soaking wet on the kerb. She is very clearly a girl." Is it? Is the Little Ghost a female of whatever species it is? There's an old cliché about the females of a species that would make a little bit of sense. But no, it's not, it's just an it, an it that kills things, an it that better be doing a bloody good job of keeping Detective Roman busy. I open my mouth, ready to give her an argument. "Shut up," Amy cuts in, "Yes, she is. Now who is she?"

I am still a long way back, round about the point at which Amy informed me the Little Ghost is a girl, and before I'll be able to answer her I'll have to get through the bit where she told me to shut up. Amy takes my shocked silence for reticence and goes on.

"You said to her, and I quote, 'Go back upstairs, steal the crocodile and wait for him to catch you before you run away'. And she _nodded_ and went to _do_ it. So what, did you save her life? Does she owe you something?"

Between 'You have no idea' and 'Stop saying _she_', I opt for the latter. "I'm still processing that. What's the matter, Pond? You look worried." She does. I'm not just saying that to change the subject. The fact that it changes the subject is just a fortunate coincidence. "I promise you, it won't make a single move that might possibly damage Rory in any way. It won't step against me that way."

This time she stops. We're stood on the corner of Fifth and Alameda. She looks up from under her umbrella again, the streetlight caught in her eyes and on her face. I can't help myself; I tip my fedora.

"That's not why I'm worried, Doctor. I'm worried because normally, when I ask you about anything, you tell me. And sometimes it's a lie, but you tell me. And this time you wouldn't even lie to me."

She's staring up at me, and bites in her lower lip.

Amy never does that.

I'm caught in the thought, 'That sounded like script'. Like dialogue.

I am interrupted by something fast and heavy barrelling between us, throwing the moment, and me, into the gutter, next to the exhaust of another Favourite Car.

Amy was flung into the opposite wall, and snaps for the new third person to watch where they're going. In rather less delicate language, which I shan't repeat. And the third person, by the footsteps, would seem to stop. I should look up, and see, but I don't. Because my hat, my fedora, is floating away down the flood rush, ruined in the water and drifting under Favourite Cars towards the sewer grate, and I can only lie and watch it disappear.

Then I look up. All but ready to use Amy's sort of language, and possibly worse, because I _wrote_ that hat _myself_, and for _me_ and, "Oh, hello River."

I'm proud of myself to find I'm not surprised. Then a little depressed. Is this marriage? Really? When I can't go anywhere without her showing up?

River, from those few extra steps down the street, rushes up to me. But doesn't try to kiss me. No, takes hold of my arm and shakes me, wild-eyed and _scared_. "Oh, mister! Mister, can you help me?"

River's voice. Well, nearly River's voice. A slightly higher pitch and sort of… _sweet_. Not something she'd ever say, and the big pleading eyes turned up to me aren't something she'd ever, ever do.

Not in front of Amy, at any rate.

It's the period dress that finally settles me that this is not my River. While I'm sure she would love to wear a little pillbox hat and matching tailored jacket, I am equally sure that they would never be that particular shade of powder-pink.

There is a glance I didn't know existed until Amy and I give it to each other; a way of saying, quite eloquently, with the brows and a tightened smile, "Crazy Rory Brain-Mind River".

This is the River that the Program has created. Rory's influence, perhaps, is in the pink; the dream of his little girl, whether or not he ever knew her as that. In the puppy-dog eyes and the singsong voice too. Here, rolled into one, is the fantasy daughter, and the most he could distance himself from the unfortunate gun-to-head incident of just two days ago. Manifestly, Crazy Rory Brain-Mind River.

Amy, forgetting that we're guests here, without a log-in as it were, steps forward and tries to hug her daughter. "River, what's the matter?"

"Get your hands off me, who are you? How do you know my name?"

Don't confuse her. Don't poke holes in the program. Don't, for God's sake, do any damage to the things holding Rory's consciousness together. I take hold of this new Daddy's Girl River and turn her back to me. "You said it to me. She heard it when you said it to me."

There is a split-second of a pause while her code accommodates this. "Fine, fine then, but Mister, you have to help me, there's a man coming and I don't know what he wants."

Quickly, I ask her if she has anything valuable on her. She opens out her matching pink pocketbook, poking through cash and cards. I try to get her to close it before she realizes all the cards say Amelia Pond on them, that the face on the driver's licence is not herself, but the woman standing behind her.

She turns out her jacket pockets to show me there's nothing else. Something falls to the pavement and I, being a gentleman, move to pick it up. And it holds me down low for a moment, for it must be studied. Over my head, Pond has been looking around from the corner and now turns to the Daddy's Girl and says, "What man? Coming from where?"

And it's true, there's no one. Or no one who could have been chasing her closely enough to make her run at us like she did? But that could be the nature of the program; the code may just dictate that at that precise moment, this River was to be racing around this corner too fast to stop.

In a computerized program like this one, destiny is a very real thing. It's not the airy fairy concept it is out there in the real world. Code says left, you turn left. Code says dance like a monkey, that's what you do.

"What's this?" I ask her, and show her what I picked up before. There on my palm, two inches long, is a tiny replica of a statue which I know to be twenty feet tall in the original. The one they unveiled on the final day of the Second Universal War, at a big party on a planet called Correl, at which I gave a speech. A statue of me.

"Oh," says Daddy's Girl, and blushes. Snatches it back from me and tucks it back in her pocket. "My lucky charm."

"Hold onto it, River. Very tight. Matter of fact," and here I stop to pull out the sonic. "Everybody hold onto something, very tight."

Daddy's Girl tightens her grip on my arm, Amy takes hold of the lamppost, and I, for lack of a more appropriate term that won't dazzle, cut-and-paste.

Back to the Rory-safe sanctuary of the hotel room. From politeness, I have given the two women the beds, though that does mean I materialize rather uncomfortably on the floor. When I sit up, they're looking at me for explanation. Daddy's Girl is confused, but here in out private little dead-zone I don't care about that. I'll explain in a minute. As it is, I run out to the hallway and, having discovered that the cut-and-paste technique has no adverse effects, snatch the Little Ghost out of the code and put it down in front of me.

Its head whips round, trying to place its surroundings, how it got there, scrabbles up against one wall as if to check that it's real. Almost good to see it scared again. Even if I had time to explain, to allay all its fears, I might not. I might. The sweetheart that Mr Pond's mind has made of my River has put me in rather a good mood and I might. But I might not. Still, I don't have the time, so we'll never know for sure.

"In a moment," I tell it, "You're going to know what to do. And you are going to do it without question, for the reasons we talked about before."

None of the desperate nodding this time. This time it's just the once. Sharp, almost military. Quite nice, actually.

Now, if Amy, in some terrible alternate universe where all that was good and true had been inverted, was the Little Ghost, this would be the part I would be worried about. But if you're going to experiment on direct data transfer from a programmable space to a biological mind, it might as well be with one who has caused unknowable pain for much less worthy causes.

Code says dance like a monkey and you dance like a monkey.

Code says steal, that's what you do.

I add in the first command as a test, and use the sonic to beam it directly to the Little Ghost. It shudders, doubles over, with the heel of its hand pressed to the forehead of its mask. Somewhere inside there's a hiss, a sharp intake of breath. But it's still on its feet and still seems responsive.

I am adding in the rest when Pond opens the hotel room door and leans out to shout at me. Probably about abandoning her, with or without reference to abandoning her with a just-barely-version of her own daughter. This last depends on how selfish she's feeling or if she's too shocked to fully appreciate how odd that situation is. I won't explain it to her and risk having to deal with it.

But she stops even as she breathes in for it, and looks at the Little Ghost instead.

"How did she get here?"

"Same way we did."

"With no warning?" I shrug. Trying to concentrate on very delicate binary, and when there are only two letters in your alphabet, typographical errors _matter_. Which _reminds_ me, remind me that I said to remind me to tell you the one about the Bishop and the actress. With one last quick spell check, I break out the sonic again. This time there's more to take on board. And it suffers. This time when it doubles over it falls to its knees too.

"Doctor, stop it! You're hurting her!"

"Oh, it'll cope."

It is one second after I have spoken and one second until the transfer will be complete when Pond lashes out and knocks the sonic, like any common or garden screwdriver rather than an instrument of great power and surgical precision and excellent door-opening skills, out of my hand and down the hallway.

"What'd you do that for?" In the corner of my eye, the Little Ghost rolls over, and once it's on all fours it's practically back on its feet. "See? It's _fine_!"

It tosses its head. For the first time, the hood of its tunic slips and falls away. For the first time I see the long black ponytail tucked down the back. Loosened from all its exertions, and a hank falling forward over the shoulder, down over the mask, even as the Little Ghost hastens to pull the hood back up.

Then it stands, slowly, sedately, and starts down the stairs.

"Wait!" Amy shouts, having not managed to catch on to the whole deaf-mute thing. "Doctor, where is she going?"

"Off, to do as it was told. Or _half_ told, as the case may be. I don't know how much of its orders it managed to get, since _somebody_ –"

"She!" Amy cries. Feverish, high-pitched. Now I see that she's looking at me in a way she never has before, in a way I can't quite analyse or understand. Neither can she, I think. I want to tell her there are factors here she isn't aware of, that there's far more to it than she can know. I want to reassure her. While I look for words, her eyes well. And she says, tearful, "It's clearly a girl."

And slams the hotel room door on me. Inside, I can hear Daddy's Girl in a fit of hysterics almost, and Amy trying to calm her. Cooing and shushing like a mother.

I open the door across the hall and wait in the dark of that other room, watching the hallway.

The plan hasn't changed.

The plan is still to save Rory, the way it always was.

But I want to know why I didn't understand Amy's last expression.

[A/N Hey there, you all everybody! Seeing as the Man Himself has so generously lent his aid, shirt and trousers to Children In Need, I'm going to donate one of my earth pounds to that most worthy of causes for every review submitted. So if you love the Doctor, or just love underprivileged kids getting a little something extra, say hi. I don't even care if you comment on the story, just let me know you're here and we'll do our bit as Whovians for the good of the universe!]


	9. Chapter 9

I've been sitting in the dark too long. It feels like falling asleep. Of course, in some obtuse way I already _am_ asleep on some level, so that's not going to happen. And across the hall, I can still hear Amy and her false River. She's doing a good job of keeping her there, of telling her everything's going to be fine. I'm not sure I'd be so brilliant in her place tonight.

Where I do very well, however, is when I hear a familiar set of beeps coming from downstairs.

I have turned off the beeping on my code-reader. That's the good thing about being the author of your own surroundings, your own destiny; you do things like disable inherent functions, because you can decide what is and isn't inherent.

Anyway, the beeping is making its way up the stairs.

And the only other person currently inside this program with access to the code should be the Thief himself. That despicable purloiner of rings and ties and would-be spiriter-away of tiny replica statues from the future. I watch through the gap between the door and the frame.

An unimpressive type. Looks a bit like a plumber, only younger. Not that plumbers have an average age, but younger than the plumber in my head. Black boots, black t-shirt, jeans all dark with the rain. Nothing to him, really. This is the architect of this most alluring and complex of programs? Must find out where he went to school, let the Ponds know, lest any future sprogs should have the opportunity to actually be raised by them.

He comes to the landing, follows the beeping to the door opposite me. Then he does the strangest thing; he picks the lock.

He has a _code-reader_ in his _hand_. He actually drops it back onto a wrist strap in order to pick the lock. With actual little scrapey-scratchy lock tools like in films.

Two lines of binary and that door never existed, and he's all scrapey-scratchy for _ages_. It takes every ounce of self-restraint I have stretched thin and working overtime just to keep from giving it a blast with the old sonic to help him out. But I remember I'm supposed to be being quiet and not-here, and I don't.

Finally, the little lock pops for him. He walks into the lit room across the hall, and looks across at the beds. His eyes must light on River first. "Right," he says, the voice rough and definite and with no room for questioning. I used to have an accent like that. "There's a thing in your pocket, love, don't know what. Just give it here, we can all go home."

Daddy's Girl screams. There's a shuffle as Amy maybe goes to her, or more likely puts herself between her and the Thief.

The Thief must look at Amy then, because he reels and says, "What the hell are you doing here? You don't look the same."

"Yeah, bit less like Rita Hayworth," she tells him, and I feel now is the time to cut in. I step across the hall to block the door behind him.

"She's not even the same code. I would have thought you'd have noticed that."

"_Jesus_!" he gasps, "You and all!"

"No, not the me you're thinking of, another-" He's giving me exactly the same look Amy did when I first tried explaining it to her. A horrible thought occurs to me, "You know nothing about any of this."

"I know I need whatever she's got in her pocket and then we can all get out of here." 'She'. Cat's mother, Pond would say. And _pointing_, too, with a rough lock-picking, plumbing finger.

"Please don't point at Rory Mind River," I say, with all the calm I can find in myself, "It's still a River of sorts and I'll still get very annoyed."

Rory Mind River is sitting on the end of the bed, staring catatonic into the carpet. It's probably the safest way for her to be, so I leave her to it. The fact that _she_ doesn't have a clue what's going on doesn't matter. But I'm stood here at the end of my only lead, my only _idea_, and the man I've found doesn't have the foggiest notion of what's going on.

Honestly, a lesser man than myself would complain that it's just not fair. My life, for the past week, has been a series of brick walls and missing links and oh-so-extra-special guest appearances by my _wife_, but I shan't complain, for I am better than that. I think.

"What's that?" I ask him. "That thing, hanging off your wrist, the one attached to the hand with the scrapey-scratchy things in it, what's that there?"

He holds up the code-reader. Forty-first century superprocessor technology, capable of compressing the data of an entire world into a manageable package for biological administration. He says, "It's a tracker." I fight the urge to repeat and to mimic and to, as Pond would have it, take off my shoe and beat him about the head and neck with it. "I go where it tells me, I get the things off the people there. Once I get all three, go home."

All three. Meaning Mad Eccentric Me, Daddy's Girl River and Film Star Pond. He has Pond's ring. He does not have my tie or River's lucky charm, not yet. He's not going anywhere like home and he knows it. He's eyeing my jacket pocket as I step up to him so I take the jacket off and throw it to Pond.

I say, "Listen well, and do not lie when you answer me. Who sent you? If you're just the monkey, and indeed not much evolved beyond that particular fork in the evolutionary road, where do I find your organ grinder?"

Rather than lie, he chooses not to answer me at all. Which might be noble, even admirable, if his alternative wasn't to swing up his arm and use that priceless piece of future equipment as a sort of mace to clock me round the head.

If there is one thing I miss about the old virtual reality, it's the painlessness. Back in the old days, the days not long after the days of the Ponds, you were just a little picture in a little picture world. The downside to the upgrade is the fact that this program is wired into the brain and I _feel_ it, I really genuinely feel it.

Between this and Pond's hangover and my data transfer to the Little Ghost, not to mention the fact that we're all running around inside Rory's, this hasn't been a great day for heads, all told.

By the time I recover, the thief is gone.

Pond, who I had rather feared wasn't talking to me, for Little-Ghost-related reasons best known to herself, crouches next to me, inspecting the rising lump on my head, holds up three fingers and asks me how many. It's all rather melodramatic and unnecessary, so I say twelve, to see if she smiles. It has rather the opposite effect to the one I intended.

She stands up and away from me. Drifts to the window and looks out, the way I made her when we first arrived, at Rory's Los Angeles.

All that time we were walking, she never noticed all those corners were Fifth and Alameda. Which, incidentally, is a corner that doesn't exist in Los Angeles. It's a line from a film Rory saw once, with his arm around a woman so beautiful that Howard Hawks lost track entirely of Lauren Bacall. I'd like to tell her that. But there simply isn't time.

In the quiet that has fallen between us, the precious little River in pink clatters her patent leather heels up and down, balls up her little fists in white gloves and squeals through her teeth, "Who _are_ you people? What's going _on_ here?"

I hold the psychic paper out to her. Try, "F.B.I.?", hoping that's in her central coding somewhere.

There's another millisecond of a glitch and then, "Oh. Okay."

"Now, Miss Song, Agent Pond and I need you to do something for us. It's very important and you'll have to be very brave."

I reach up from the floor and take her little pink pocketbook from the bed. With all her matching accessories and the slightly blank look of the program, the effect is rather that of a Barbie doll.

I want to tell Pond that, but she's still looking out at the rain.

On a page torn from Daddy's Girl's address book, I write down where to find Detective Roman's office. Then I remember to give actual directions, what will all the streets being either Fifth or Alameda.

"I need you to go there as fast as you can and find Agent Rory Williams. Tell him what happened here. He'll know what to do."

Amy starts to turn, and she starts shaking her head, muttering, over and over, 'No', before she's quite managed to formulate an argument against it. But I know what she's going to say and I stand to quiet her. Give her the old 'trust me' eyes. She stops talking. There are no more 'no-no-no's, certainly.

But she doesn't stop shaking her head.

Timing being everything, I turn from her to Daddy's Girl and tell her she should be gone by now, as fast as she can, away to find Agent Rory Williams at Fifth and Alameda.

She's programmed to follow instructions. She takes off from the bed, pauses in the doorway to breathlessly thank me, and leaves.

The thank you, I suspect, is in the script. We haven't really done anything for her.

"But Doctor, she can't meet Rory if she's met us," Pond says, softly, urgently, as soon as she's out of earshot. "That's the real world getting in, isn't it? If she tells him about us… _untold damage_, you said, _why_ aren't I allowed to talk to my husband!"

I pick up the pink-covered pocketbook from the floor and rifle in amongst the cards. When I come up with the right one I hold it up to Pond. "Oh, look!" I say, smiling, hoping she'll smile back, "Your driver's licence!"

"What's that doing there?"

"How many womens' purses do you think Rory sees the inside of? Never mind that, put it in your pocket. Just because we're FBI now doesn't mean we can break the law at will, you know. No, quite the opposite. We must uphold it to the letter. Except those letters about using keys to start a car and not a sonic screwdriver, those are silly letters, we won't uphold those, they can down-fall, rather than be upheld."

She smiles back. Not much, at first. At first, she's looking at the sonic like it's a deadly weapon. So I put the driving licence down in front of it, bob it up and down a bit, until the smile grudgingly stretches and she snatches it off me.

"How comfortable are you with car chases?"


	10. Detective Story, pt 3

_I've got that Doctor from upstairs and a plastic crocodile, and the memory of a thief who does not match Miss Pond's description. I've got squat. _

_ Miss Pond saw a young man of a compact but muscular build with short dark hair. Me and the Doctor both saw a small, indefinite person with a white mask and hood. That's not just square one, you know. That confusion? That's a step even further back. That's square zero. I'd suspected, before, that square zero existed, and when things were at their worst I'd think, 'Hey, thank God I'm not there'. And here I stand. How it goes, I guess. Everybody's got a rock bottom they have to hit someday. _

_ Just doesn't seem so fair that I hit it the night I get the job from the movie star. _

_ The Doctor from Upstairs is still here, by the way. He's at the window, looking out, even though I've told him a couple of times now to put the blind down. She's looking at me. In off the billboard with those warm and impossibly shining eyes. And this is the forties, my friend, they don't have computer enhancement yet._

_ Wait. What's computer enhancement? _

_ I must have read about it in a magazine. Something they're working on. I keep having those odd interruptions today when I'm thinking. _

_ Anyway, he's still here. And when I'm trying to think where to go when all my leads get strangled in thorns, he says to me, "Mr Williams?"_

_ "Just a second, Doctor, I'm just going to get the number of this cop I kn-"_

_ "Mr Williams, I believe it may be imperative that you get over here right now and see this." It's not that he shouts, it's just that his voice climbs the pitches until I'd do about anything to make him stop, so I go to the window. _

_ Out in the street, there's a girl. And she's running, hell for leather, clattering in pink patent heels down the middle of the street, skidding and sliding in the rainwater. Thick, curly hair is plastered down around her face and shoulders, and she's looking frantically around at the street names and at a piece of paper in her hand, trying to find her way to someplace or another._

_ "Doctor, I got two cases on that aren't even necessarily the same case. I'm not taking in any strays tonight." He turns to me and makes what I can only assume is a futile attempt at a slap. I don't feel a thing, but it's the principle that counts. I breathe deep so I don't sound angry when I say, "Is there a problem?"_

_ "_Look_!" he says, drawing out the syllable long, clapping one hand to the back of my head and forcing it almost through the window. He puts a fingertip down next to my eye and draws a square in the condensation on the glass. I reach up and remove the centre of it._

_ At a junction maybe twelve feet behind the lost woman in pink, peering round the corner, there's a white mask with big black eyes. _

_ "Goddamnit, Doctor!" I shout, grabbing my coat on my way out the door, "Why can't you just _say_ these things?"_

_ I run out of the building, down to the street. The doorman doesn't look up, because he never does. Run out with no hat into the rain, and there she is. _

_ Still a block away, the pretty little woman in pink, and I can tell from here she's a sweet person and kind and impossibly beautiful, the way you feel about a best friend or a little sister or something else I can't quite put my finger on, she shouts to me, "Are you Agent Rory Williams?"_

_ I don't know about 'agent' of any sort, but otherwise she's got it about right, and two out of three is majority. So I nod and wave her to me. I can't see the mask anymore. _

_ For a quiet, relieved moment, I figure it must have seen me and gone away. _

_ Moments are short. It was in the side streets. The woman in pink is running towards me. The person in the mask runs out of a side street. The woman sees them from the corner of her eye and, rather than run harder, just stops, and throws her arms up around her head like that's going to do any good._

_ The masked person doesn't attack. They slow down as they get to her, and just sort of reach into her pocket. The woman seems to know what they're going for though, and starts flailing at them with limp little hands. And screaming. Oh God, yeah, this one's a screamer. It's not putting the thief off any, though, so I go to help. Go fast, go hard at it. I ought to have brought the revolver, but I left the office too quick._

_ Christ, I don't have a _revolver_, do I?_

_ Yeah. Yeah, of course I do. Jesus, in this city, these days? Yeah I have a revolver. Goddamn right I do. Man's got a right. _

_ Anyhow, I'm there now. And as the Thief grabs something from the pocket of the woman in pink, I grab the Thief away from her, into the middle of the street, down onto the asphalt, and God, for something so small it fights like a coyote in a trap. It struggles and struggles, scratches and kicks, all elbows and knees and other sharp and vicious parts. I try to get it pinned._

_ While I'm doing that, behind me, there's a squeal of tyres. Somebody wasn't thinking about the road conditions. _Somebody _never ever thinks about the road conditions or the weather, or anything beyond mirror-signal-manoeuvre. Typical woman._

_ Of course I haven't looked up, so I don't know it's a woman. I don't know that._

_ Anyway, what I'm getting at is, the tyres screech because they're stopping._

_ "River," says a voice, "Get in!" I want to look up and see who that is, because the voice sounds like a voice that I know, and anyway the woman in pink is getting away. "Agent William's is compromised!"_

_ And I want to tell that voice that just because I'm on top of the thief doesn't mean there's any kind of compromise going on, but the person beneath me reaches up to claw my face, and I finally get the other nasty little hand pushed down against the tarmac._

_ Asphalt, even. Goddamnit. There's something too strange going on in my mind tonight. Too much, maybe. Things I've been through tonight would drive anybody crazy. Yeah. That's what it is. _

_ The car behind me screams away again before I can even get a look at it. All I've got is the masked thief. And it's the strangest thing; when the car pulls away, the person beneath me stops struggling._

_ They lies still, and I realize that they is a she, and climb off. Of course I keep hold of its wrists. I don't have to pull it up, though; it feels I'm getting up and just does the same._

_ Like it wants to be caught._

_ "Come on," I tell her. "You're coming with me, sweetheart."_

_ She just nods, and goes about it. I try not to believe I'm going crazy. Just take it. Just figure it's a good thing and take it. I take her back inside, take her up to the office._

_ Stranger thing still; the doorman, the one who's always reading the paper, the one that looks up at me and turns the page when I pass, he doesn't do any different when I'm dragging a dame along by the arms._

_ Not going crazy. Don't think about it. Just take her upstairs._

_ "You!" cries the Upstairs Madman, pointing a vicious finger so straight it trembles at her. "Thief! Return what you stole from me at once!"_

_ The thief tips her head over onto her side. Then pats herself down to show she has no pockets. _

_ "I'll do the searching, thanks," I tell her. Once I know she's wearing something under that loose tunic, I pull it off. She folds her bare arms suddenly over each other, like air hurts her skin, and pushes her face down into her elbows. I run my hands over her trousers and lift the cuffs, checking down the sides of her tight-laced boots. Eventually, I stand back._

_ "So," I say, kind of sheepish, "I guess you don't have anything, huh?"_

_ I give her back the tunic. She pulls that one first and pulls up her hood. Then she opens out her right hand. There's a little statuette there, no bigger than a chess piece. For all I know, it could be. That must have been what she took from the pink ladies pocket._

_ I pick it up and say, "No bowtie, Doctor, I'm sorry." When I look at him, it occurs to me that the little figure in my hand is kind of a likeness. Day I've had, a coincidence like that doesn't even surprise me. _

_ The Doctor charges up to the girl in the mask. Does it fast and fierce. I don't see him like this, you know. I've heard about it, but I don't see him like this. Damn sure I see it now, but normally, any other day, I don't see him look so angry he forces her back into my visitor chair. Stands there in front of her, his face down in her face, his hands on the arm of the chair so she coils back, still hugging herself. "What have you done with it, you horrible little thing?"_

_ A real loud shout, and real close to her face. I know he means it. I know, because he told me, that what she stole has sentimental value, even if I don't understand it. So I get it, but she gets it too; she's _scared _already. Maybe so much so she can't tell him a goddamn thing._

_ I move him out of the way and lean down to her. _

_ "You take some stuff from this guy?" I say, nodding at him. She shakes her head, slow and sure. I don't know why, but I believe her. Maybe the lightning eyes behind the mask. That's the only way I can describe them; like lightning. "I'm going to take your mask off, sweetheart, okay?"_

_ Both of her hands clap up to her face to hold it there. Not okay, apparently. Then one hand secures it and the other hand flings out to point at the Doctor, then to wave him towards the door, twice, desperately._

_ "She wants you to wait outside."_

_ "Well, honestly, there's the rights of prisoners and then there's just plain ridiculous, when she's the one in the wrong and therefore, I shall not-"_

_ "Wait outside, Doctor," I say. I give him a look too that makes it a definite order, too. He looks prissy and indignant and like he's going to give me an argument, but when I stand up straight, I retreats. Goes quick too, out beyond the door. And I can see his shadow on the frosted glass, still trying to see in, so I tell the girl, "Don't worry, he can't see a thing." _

_ I go for the mask. She flinches at first. She's curled up in that chair with her legs tucked up, hiding her chin behind her knees. But then she unfolds, tips up her head. Enough for me to get hold anyway, and lift it off comfortably. _

_ Mussed dark hair falls in curls down either side of a wide, pale face, with a few pale freckles along the cheekbones. Without the mask blocking them off, the eyes are impossibly big, and the mouth is small, rosebud. The thief has a face now. _

_ Beyond the door, the Doctor is still peering, trying to see inside. I lean down and say to the girl, "How do you know him? Why couldn't I take your mask off when he was here?"_

_ She looks around her, swinging her head in big circles, then goes to my desk. Picks up a pen and writes on the blotter._

_ "Him am being Now-owner, but not Owner. Have am being Bad-Owner. Him am to be seen her face, her is like fingersnap to be falling down dead. Good Other Owner am to have been before-teaching that."_

_ After a while, I figure out what those words are trying to say. They still don't mean anything. _

_ No, that's not true._

_ They mean she's heart-scared of the Doctor._

_ Like I said that time before, I don't know what kind of Doctor that guy is._

_ I am still holding her mask in my hands, and it's the strangest thing; it's like waking up from a dream. It's like I know something new, and I don't quite have words for it. Don't even know what it is. Except that it's in my hands, and in my visitor chair, and outside the door, trying to see inside._


	11. Chapter 11

Following a much faster beep, I am trying to lead Amy to the Thief again.

"That was way too close," she says, drowning out the beep.

"Ssh," I tell her.

"No, really, Doctor, I could see the hairs on the back of his neck; it was very literally too close. I'm not allowed to talk to him and I could have counted follicles, given the chance."

"Well, Amy – _Left! _– I wouldn't ever have recommended to you – _Left again!_ – hanging around long enough to do any counting of any kind. It's just we were – _Right!_ – waiting for River to get in, weren't – _Left!_ – we?"

It's not that we can't die in a horrible flaming car crash, all burnt up and seared into the seats of the Favourite Car, just because Rory is in control of the program to some extent. We could. If we crash, that is very much a possibility. It's just that she's driving far too quickly to safely comply with my instructions. There's lots of screeching involved, and a human car is not like a Tardis; noise is very much a bad thing in a human car.

And poor Daddy's Girl is in the back seat, sliding up and down and yelping on each and every one of those corners.

"_Right!_" I shout to Amy. She turns especially hard, and the cry from the back seat is especially ear-splitting. "No, wait," I say, "We're going to have to let her out somewhere."

That makes Amy slow down. Not quite standing on the brake, but enough to jolt us all forward. Daddy's Girl falls over my seat and wraps her arms around my neck. "Oh," she says, with something like a smile, right in my ear, "Hi there, Mister."

"Where do you live?" I ask her.

She takes it entirely the wrong way, and lifts an eyebrow. "Fifth and Alameda, Mister FBI." Oh. Of course she does. Everybody lives at Fifth and Alameda. Honestly, Rory; Wiltshere, Rodeo, Venice, _everybody_ knows street-names for LA, don't they?

"Pond?" I say, "Fifth and Alameda, please." She shifts the car into first and creeps the few feet to the next corner.

"No," says Daddy's Girl, slow and uncertain, big lower lip stuck out. "This isn't it."

"Yes it is," I say, and sonic her down to the core of her code. Her face goes blank and she climbs out of the car. "You have to go. I think your mother wants to talk to me."

"My _mother_?" she says, from the kerb, "Why, you'll have to go to Fifth and Alameda if you want _her_ place, Mister."

I would answer her, only Amy cuts in. "Oh, we'll find it," she says. In the same moment, she puts her foot down so hard that this time it throws the two of us back. The beeping from the code-reader becomes frantic. "_You_ keep giving directions." That's not her ultimatum tone, by the way. That's not even an order. She isn't even asking. She is letting me know what she expects. "_I'm _going to talk, for once, and for once you're not going to treat me like I'm stupid for doing it."

I would tell her that I've never for a moment ever thought she was stupid, not even all those times she ran to get her phone so she could have her photograph taken with some alien race like a low-rent time tourist, but this doesn't seem to be the time. So I say, "Alright, Pond."

"For reasons I can't even-"

"_Right!_"

"-B_egin_ to fathom, you've gone all mean." Neither is this the time to argue, so I let that go too. "Now, being the sweet and trusting person that I am, I'm willing to believe that-

"_Left!_"

"-Those reasons are good, and that while they may remain hyour own that they are working to my benefit. Remember that, Doctor, because-

"_Left_!"

"If they're not I'll be very angry. And I am, after all, your mother-in-law, so don't underestimate my ability to make your every waking moment hell."

"Stop!" I say.

"No, I'm not finished."

"The _car_, Amy, stop the car."

She does it. Emergency-style, which is not strictly necessary. But a stop's a stop. Stops and _glares_ at me then, which is really most unbecoming too her. And yes, I'm aware of how often I say that, of just how much it must seem I find unbecoming in her, but really, beyond smiling and fawning and that occasional glimpse of unquantifiable strength, very little _does_ suit that precious face of hers.

Shock. She's very good at shock. And fear, not that I'd ever say that to her face.

"What?" she wants to know. "What's the matter with you?"

"Listen." Little trilling noises, coming from everywhere. From inside the buildings, from inside little boxes on the street, from inside the top pocket of her shirt. "The phones," I explain. "All the phones are ringing."

Rather than go for Amy's mobile, which is rather delicately poised between getting punched by Rory and not getting punched by Rory, I climb legs first out of the car and go to one of those little glass booths on the street. A telephone box. I close myself inside and answer.

"Hello?"  
>"Hello, sweetie."<p>

"And just when I thought it was safe to drive free in the Program…"

"Is that any way to greet your wife?"

"I was going to ask where you're calling from, but I suppose the answer would be _everywhere_, what with you calling to _everywhere_ and all."

"You really must stop stealing my lines, my love."

"It's not _my_ fault I'm always a step ahead of you, River. You're just not quick enough."

Far away somewhere, she sighs. "You old meanie." I can't help it. I look out through the booth, back to the car, back to Pond, shouting into her phone, wondering why nobody answered her. "You're looking for the real Thief," she tells me, "So you can have your big old Poirot moment."

"And you're going to tell me where to find him?"

"Just follow the phones, dear. Kudos, by the way. Real stroke of genius, using that darling Ghost of yours as an unknown factor." Which makes me wonder _when_ she's calling from, and I ask her. River laughs down the phone, "I wouldn't worry about that. You'll understand when you get there." She hangs up then, with a hard, old-fashioned click of the dying line. There's something about that noise, and the dial tone after it, that just scares a feeling heart. Just makes it empty and alone in the world. Makes it hollow and yearning and sore.

'You'll understand when you get there'. She said something like that to me before.

I'm thinking about that when, two blocks down the road, another phone box suddenly lights up neon, and the phone inside is ringing. I run back to the car and jump in. "Pond! Follow that noise!"

When we creep up behind him, the Thief is trying to talk to somebody on one of the payphones. It must be his link to outside, this certain payphone. On instinct, without really thinking, I look up to the street-signs, to make a note of where it is. Fifth and Alameda.

When we get out of here, I vow to myself, I'm going to go right back to the founding of this city and ban those two streets. Those names shall never be placed, shall never happen, shall never haunt this particular biocomputerized nightmare. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a dream, and for now, that is it.

I raise a hand for Pond to wait, and put my ear to the glass.

"No," he's saying, "I've only got one of the four." There's a pause, and a voice on the far end. He tries in vain to interrupt it, and really, who could blame that person? One out of four just isn't kosher, or even meatloaf.

Four. Four is an interesting one. There's Mad Upstairs Doctor, Movie Star Pond and Daddy's Girl River. Which is three. What's four?

But from what I can tell, from the stumps of sentences the Thief manages to get out, he wants very much to 'go home'. I presume the program was explained to him as a destination more so than what it really is. Why didn't I think of that? Who put him here that's cleverer than me at explaining things down to a human level?

Who's on the other end of that line to know I'm there, and instruct him to turn around? I can tell he's been instructed. That comes with practice, you know. You start to recognize that particular expression, the pursed mouth and wide eyes, that simultaneously indicates fear of the unknown and knowing what's probably there.

Pity he hangs up before I can get that phone from him and find out. And he opens the door of the booth, knowing he's absolutely trapped there and that whacking me one with the Reader won't work this time.

"Hello," is how I begin. I have discussed before the importance of proper manners, even when under such enormous strain. "Now, I know all you want to do is go home, Mr…?" He folds up his big, wrench-friendly plumber's arms. He has piercings in a little row down the left ear. Plumbers have piercings, don't they? Isn't that how they recognize each other? Anyway, my point is, he's being uncooperative.

So I reach out to Pond, who hands me back my own code reader, and I pick his details up out of the program.

"Mr Liam Reilly, of Leeds, twenty-third century. Well… good to know Leeds is still there, anyway. Leeds is good, isn't it?"

I just complimented his place of origin. In terms of intergalactic diplomacy, this is entry-level and even trite in most circles. Apparently, however, twenty-third century Earth still isn't all that brilliant when it comes to intergalactic diplomacy. It is, I suppose, nice to know that some things never change. Gives one a sense of constancy in a world which is rarely more than stable and never less than perplexing.

No, like I say, Mr Liam Reilly does not reply. Stands there like I'm going to go away if he ignores me.

"Listen, long story short, my friend, the person that was on that phone will not extract you until you can present all three items of interest, yes? And you will not _get_ those three items, because I will not allow it. So your only possible way out of here, and trust me, you want to get out before I do, is to come with me."

Mr Liam Reilly breathes in deep, rubs his chin as he considers, as if he has a choice. Eventually, "What are you planning, then?"

"Tea and scones," I tell him, truthfully. "Or the Future-Forties Brain equivalent."


	12. Chapter 12

River, in her four-second phone call, was just that little bit wrong that she usually is. She said I was wanted my big old Poirot moment. Which is true as far as it goes, but she said it like these things just _happen_. This is _not_ Agatha Christie. I have very much been there and done that and as much fun as it was, I do not care to revisit it. All those people in those stories are trapped together. Poirot and Marple and all of them up to Jessica bloody Fletcher, they had a captive audience. They never had to organize their big parlour scene around people who couldn't meet without collapsing the world they stood in, never had to worry about staying in character. Never had to wonder where the Little Ghost had ended up after its scuffle with Rory, whether or not it had gotten the full instructions re: not harming him in any way.

It's all very stressful, really.

Pond has already been to the Mad Other Doctor's rooms upstairs, so I send her up again. Liam Reilly and I wait in the alley at the back.

"So," I say to him, since he makes _no_ polite attempt at small talk, "who put you here, then?" No response. He folds up his full-sleeve tattoo arms again and looks away from me. Between those and all the metal in his ear and scattered over his face, you can't help but wonder what else of him has had a needle put to it.

Just a casual, passing thought while I give him a chance to answer.

"I only ask because the program is so well done. I'd like to meet whoever wrote it. I had thought it was you, but… clearly not."

I nearly said, 'But you look like a plumber', but I'm working on that rudeness thing. Well done to me, I think, on that one. Also, of course, in all my long long time I've known several plumbers who would have made wonderful neuroprogram architects. Had one work on the Tardis, once. And thought it would cost me not a thought to insult this thieving tattooed man, I would never insult at a single blow that entire and most noble profession.

"Who put you here? Who was it that couldn't come here themselves? Or wouldn't, I suppose. That's the way of cowardly people, and I've met quite a number of those, to send people like you in their place. You're just a proxy, aren't you, Liam Reilly?"

Then Liam Reilly swears under his breath and holds his head in both hands and mutters something. Something which, if I didn't know better and pray for better and hope against hope against hope for better, I would say sounds like 'I'm so sorry, General.'

There's that word again.

General. I'm about to ask him if that's what he said, and why he said it, and why it is he calls me General and who told him to do that, and if the Silence are about to show up any minute because, let's face it, that's the pattern. From a third floor balcony, though, somebody hisses my name. I look up. Pond is leaning over the Mad Other Doctor's balcony.

"I've got the stuff."

"Throw it down."

I hold out my arms, that she might drop the required items into it. Instead of doing that, carefully and gently, apparently she turns her back on the balustrade and flings the whole heap over her shoulder, and it all lands around me.

Purple velour jacket; check. Sky blue shirt, with fine white pinstripe; check. Tacky, shiny, silvery bowtie; check, unfortunately. I have Liam Reilly hold my own much cooler jacket and shirt while I change.

Because _I_ can't go up there. Normal, real world, not-mad Doctor is absolutely persona non grata up there. Not if he doesn't want the walls to digitize and drop away around him, doesn't want to lose his soul in the eternal void of a braindead mind.

But the other one, the program one, well, he's part of all this. He can go where he pleases, say what he feels. Whether Detective Roman likes it or not.

From above, Pond's voice calls down, "Anything else?" I am in the process of buttoning my shirt, and duck away under the balconies, out of sight. "Nothing I haven't seen before, Doctor."

And Liam Reilly is laughing at me. In a strange, stifled way through sealed lips, but a laugh is a laugh. So I step back out and tell her, "Yes, _actually_, two things. Firstly, I need you make lots and lots of noise up there. Also, stick the kettle on. It's coffee, isn't it? Americans and detectives and forties people, they go more for coffee, don't they?"

Once she pops her little head back inside, things go much more comfortably and hence quickly. When I am dressed for the occasion, I go to wait in the lobby. And without a word, Liam Reilly follows. It occurs to me that Liam Reilly gave in without much of an argument, and referred to me as 'General'. I check my hands and arms for score-keeping, just in case, before I speak. They are clear.

I have toyed with various ways of phrasing the question. "So when do they start calling me 'General'?" is what I eventually settle on.

"What?"

"Don't start."

"What are you talking about?"

"What is it that I'm General _of_? Or, 'of what am I General', but you don't look like a grammar Nazi." He's giving me this blank, Program-esque stare despite not being part of the program, so this time I can't help myself, "You look like a plumber."

He laughs at that, right out loud. "I've been called many bloody things, mate, but never a plumber…"

The fact that he laughs still annoys me. Like he doesn't think he's in any danger. Like this can't end badly for him, which I'm sad to say it can. Like he _likes_ me. I would tell him all this, only it's right at that moment that Pond decides to start making lots of noise on the third floor.

The Mad Doctor runs to see what's going on in his flat this time. A minute later, when Detective Roman has heaved a heavy sigh and decided that, oh hell, he'd better go and help the daft old coot out again, I walk back in through the door.


	13. Detective Story, pt 4

_A guy who wasn't such a good guy would be getting kind of tired of this guy. But the first thing I do is worry. Because he walked in and out that door in the space of twenty seconds, which isn't really time to get upstairs and back again, and he doesn't look well. Different, anyway. Got these harder lines to his face, a glassiness to him, looking the office over like he's never seen it before. Flicking his eyes back to me to make sure I haven't noticed anything strange._

_ First strange thing; I think he's changed his clothes. Which he hasn't really had time to do either. Second strange thing; he's got some kind of little machine in his hand, like an old style Gameboy._

_ He looks at me, and pulls back, narrowing one eye, and seems to read all this. Then twiddles at the Gameboy and says, "No, no I haven't. And I've been carrying this all night. It's… integral to my health, yes, that it."_

_ His voice is lower. There's more control in it, something like restraint._

_ Then he goes on, "As to upstairs, false alarm, cat ran over the piano, or, something… like that… _Anyway!" _Word by word, the control and the restraint and the dignity disappear. This is paranoia, and it's not the healthy kind. What could possibly have happened to him, anyway? Losing my mind._

_ I sit back down at the desk. And I'm tired and Christ I feel so end. If I had to describe it, it's a feeling like the end getting close. I look up in that lunatic's eyes and there's something there, maybe. I think for a second it could be pity, before I remember I wasn't going to be concerned about him anymore. _

_ But slightly to the left and behind the eyes a ways is something that gets me all wound up again._

_ I stand again. "Who the hell is that?"_

_ The Doctor turns and looks. Right up and down that funny-dressed hoodlum he would seem to have brought with him to my office. A guy who wasn't such a nice guy as myself might be reaching for the revolver in an itchy kind of way, knowing he's not really going to use it but liking the idea of it and wanting that weight in his hand to make it solid. _

_ Then he looks back to me, and says, "This is Liam." Like it should have known that already. Like I've heard so much about Liam I should have recognized him on sight. The Doctor sees the still-wet crocodile standing in the corner to dry, grabs it to him and begins to waltz it about the room. Which yeah, I can buy. And it's a stupid looking sight, but in the context of him it's closer to normal than all the standing still, so I can nearly relax now. Which is about as close I ever get to relaxed. "Liam came to make a confession," he calls. Close to Liam, he swings the crocodile right back in a tango lean and looks up to that face full of holes and metal and says, "Didn't you, Liam?"_

_ "I hate to break it to you, Doctor, but Liam… Liam ain't there."_

_ He looks and finds out it's true. Liam's gone all glazed over. Stood there like a robot that hasn't had orders yet. "Liam?" he says. "Liam?" Liam, with his head limp on the side, comes to my desk. And tears the top sheet off the paper blotter. The one the girl wrote on._

_ I bet she can see this too. She made me hide her from him, but I bet she can see. _

_ Anyway, he takes that, and he puts the tape dispenser under his arm, and goes to the window. _

_ "Tape dispenser!" the Doctor cries, "Invented 1932, but I bet if I'd asked you, you'd have said eighties, wouldn't you? _Liam! _Give me the ring that belongs to Miss Amelia Pond of the Silver Screen."  
>Liam is taping the blotter sheet to the inside of my window. The Doctor sighs loudly and shakes his head. "Honestly, you just can't get the hired guns these days. Anyway, he's just doing a little bit of code, he'll be back with us in a moment and we'll get it off him then. Now-" The Doctor pauses here. He picks up a handful of paperclips from my desk and begins firing them one by one into the pot plant. "Paperclips," he muses, "Never known a private detective to use a paperclip never mind need a whole stack of them but in Roryland, I suppose, desks have paperclips, don't they?"<em>

_ It's like falling asleep. That feeling when you're so far gone that every time you blink you could be gone. And for a moment I'm almost certain that I'm gone. _

_ "Anyway, Mr Pond, Williams, Detective Roman, you are currently, if the Little Ghost has done its_, her_, job well, in possession of a tiny metal replica of a very large metal replica of a normal sized fleshy me, is this correct?"_

_ Fine. He wants a game, he can have one. I take it out of my pocket and put it down on the desk. _

_ "And this right here which I am currently producing from my pocket and unrolling would be one blue silk bow tie of great personal significance."_

_ "Goddamnit, Doctor, don't tell me that's been in your pocket all this time!"_

_ "Fraid so, but it's not how you think." He puts it down by the little figure, comes around the desk to stand behind me and grabs my arm at the wrist. One finger hooks under and extends one of mine, leading the whole thing over to the phone. "Now call Miss Pond and tell her to come and collect her ring." I can't. I can't remember it, too busy thinking about the way he just took hold of me. Like this is his scene now. "Come along, Mr Pond, number, _number_!"_

_ "What'd you just call me?"_

_ "Number!"_

_ So I dial. To hell with it. I dial._

_ While it's ringing, the Doctor heaves himself up to sit cross-legged on the end of my desk. "There we are now. All relatively painless." Tips his arm to check his watch. "Should all be over in about fifteen min-"_

_ He stops. His gaze has caught, dull and gone as his friend Liam's, on the little white shell of a mask on my desk. _

_ He reaches out to touch it. In a single perfect instant I think of the girl, and I think of what happened when I first held that thing. I grab it up and hold it out of his reach. "That's not yours." _


	14. Chapter 14

"She'll be here in ten minutes," says Detective Roman when he puts the phone down.

"Oh, she'll be quicker than that, you'll just think it was ten minutes. I must say that's a very fine mask you just snatched off your desk, might I see it?"

"No."

You know I'm not mad about Detective Roman. He's not nearly quite so bumbling and amiable as his real life counterpart. He's rather a tough old scone and I'd like very much to see that mask for myself, please. Because now that the bowtie and the little statue are standing on the desk together, there's a sense from them, a feeling of importance. You can tell, as it were, that they are the items one would need to gather to complete this particular mission. And I'm getting a vague scrap of that same sense from the mask. I slip down from the desk, really cool and casual, and try to nip round behind him. Detective Roman tosses it into his other hand. In the same moment, he stands up from the desk, goes around me across the room. Behind Liam, who is very intent that that blotter paper will be safely taped up and legible from outside the window. To the venetian slatted doors of a closet on the far side of the room.

He opens the doors and there it is. She. A very definite she. Her hands are cuffed in front of her, and she brings them up to cover her face, but it is still very much a female face. She.

"Who's that?" I say, btut he fact is I've seen her before. I would know for sure if she would look at me, but she won't. Even when she grabs out blindly to take the mask from Detective Roman, she turns her head away and buries her face in her shoulder.

With big blue eyes and long dark hair.

'Am Doctor bad-friend. Him is not likes her very much.'

I knew that, didn't I? I knew those eyes, knew the broken sentences it scrawled in my notebook.

_She_, a definite she, finally calms enough to take the mask from him and presses it back over her face. Too late, of course, but it makes her happy.

I knew all this. Why does it surprise me to find that I knew this?

But there's no time for this now. I'm not here for her. I'm here to be madcap and not put any more holes in the program but instead to casually, piece by piece, disassemble the world that keeps Rory comatose and ease him into waking.

"So you're saying that guy there are my window is the thief?" Roman asks me.

"After a fashion. I'd really rather wait until Miss Pond arrives and explain all at once. It's called a parlour scene. You detectives should know all about it."

"It's just 'cause this here," and he puts the Little Ghost in front of him, "is the person I caught stealing."

This is all very dangerous talk. As soon as Detective Roman starts to solve the mystery, he'll start to get sleepy. And him falling asleep here is him waking up in the real world. And should he do that with Pond and I and the Little Ghost and Mr Liam Reilly all still running around up here then… well, he could end up the only living mind on the Tardis, and I don't think he knows how to land her.

"She'll be here in a couple of minutes."

"Listen, Doctor," he says, and he really does look rather angry. Which only ever refers to Amy or River, who I'm trying to help, and I don't like him turning it on me, thank you very much. Also, as it turns out, he's quite scary when he's properly angry. And I keep thinking of that time he punched me and trying not to flinch. "I've called that woman here, and I don't even know if I have anything to give her! Look that this crazy you brought here!" By this, he refers not to the Little Ghost as I would have guessed, but to Liam Reilly. "Do you even _know_ he has a goddamn thing?" I know he has code, which I hadn't thought about. Makes sense, I suppose; if you're sending somebody into a program as a proxy, and there are things you want them to get done, it makes sense. It's the same as I did to the Little Ghost. But why program him to tape a piece of paper to a window and not to steal the things he was meant to steal properly. Why not write him in entirely and take out all the chance and risk except for my intervention?

The architect of this program is too intelligent, too advanced, not to have thought of that, but I am stumped.

So I try again. "Liam!" No response. "Little Ghost!" I snap my fingers, rush up and bang a fist on Roman's desk so the Little Ghost jumps to attention, staring right at me. "Search Mr Reilly, I haven't the time. You're looking for a ring." It nods, that once, military nod, and goes to it. This obedience thing is really rather nice and refreshing. It's probably just the novelty, though. I imagine if I told the Little Ghost to stay with the Tardis and not run off, it would do it.

She, I mean.

Oh, God, a definite she.

"Little Ghost?" Roman parrots at me. "What is all this, what happened? You left the room for a _minute_ and came back-" He doesn't know the word. It's wise, by the way. Or omnipotent, maybe. All-knowing. Super-genius-mega-brain. Any or all of the above are suitable and will do.

"Hey!" This is from neither me nor Roman, but from Liam Reilly. My first thought is that, to be saying anything, he must have finished with his set task. But when I look over, one corner of the blotter paper is rolling down across the window. What, then, has been powerful enough to distract him?

The Little Ghost. She is pinching his hand, much in the way I put Amy to sleep, except that Liam won't sleep. Instead, his hand just straightens out and turns deep pink and shakes, while it, _she_, fights a black and silver ring off his thumb. He swears, and moves as though to strike her, it, _her_, but the Little Ghost just ducks away and continues to twist and pull.

"No!" he says, with finality. His other hand comes up in a fist and slams down on her skinny arm, forcing her to let go. "Jessica gave me that." He and I both know what he's saying. It's very clear that she doesn't. But for him, this is the last straw. He reaches into his jeans pocket, and his hand comes out with a diamond solitaire hooked on the tip of his little finger.

The Little Ghost brings it to me. I hold my hand out to receive it, but as I do, it, _she_, looks right up into my eyes. And I see quite clearly the light and the life there. None of that glassy robotics. She has not been coded to obey. She refrained from murdering all and sundry or attempting any other kind of escape all by herself. And the expression beyond the mask is one of hope, of faith in me. She got me back the ring; do I like her now?

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing. The Little Ghost lowers _her_ head and goes to stand in the corner by the crocodile.

I turn, about to call to it. Not that I know what I'll do after that, just that I don't want it to walk away like that. I might send it up to Amy. Amy will know what to do and anyhow, I worry about her having to keep the Mad Upstairs Doctor busy when she looks like apparently-the-only-movie-star in this whole Roryworld.

Unfortunately, just at that moment, said-Movie-Star knocks on the door from outside. Roman stands, I straighten, Liam Reilly turns back from the window.

In almost perfect unison, "Come in."


	15. Chapter 15

Just on the off chance that River should ever get a hold of these records, here comes my Poirot moment, alright? Now just look at how much has had to go into this. These things do not just happen, not in the real world. Or, more correctly, in the disorganized computer minds of one's companions. We're not all perpetual fonts of effortless cool, my love, some of us have to work for it.

Film Star Pond has arrived in the same dress that, sleeping out in the real world, Last Night's Pond is wearing. Detective Roman escorts her inside and seats her. She looks around at the rest of us, wary of the crowd and the strangers, but still untouchable, still haughty. Nothing can happen to her here. This brain can't allow for it. It would have been one sure way to break the program in two, were it not absolutely impossible.

"I'd heard you were good," she says, addressing Roman and ignoring the rest of us, "But I have to say, I thought I'd have more than an hour or two to wait."

"I told you I'd get him, sister."

"Excuse me!" I didn't mean to cut in, but that's a _blatant_ lie. Pointing at Liam Reilly and say, "I brought that one."

Roman points wordlessly, not caring, at the Little Ghost.

I tell the Movie Star, "My one had your ring."

She half-smiles, looking over me with mild bemusement. It's all I can do not to tell her that she picked out this outfit. "And you would be?"

"Amelia, this is the Doctor," Roman says. All very polite, of course, but I'm quite capable of introducing myself, I do it rather frequently and I've made something of an art out of it. Still, you can't expect these maverick types to care about things like that, can you. "The Doctor thinks he can explain _everything_, don't you, Doctor?"

"Each and every of the things, Detective, barring one, which will be explained, but not by me."

I must be very careful not to explain that last thing, even by accident. That last thing is the one that holds the gate open long enough for us to get out before Rory wakes. It would be much easier, however, to avoid this topic if I knew what it was.

But, in the circumstances, what can I do but plough right on? I do hope you're ready, ladies and gentlemen; the Doctor is about lie, and all for a good cause, and in fine style too.

"Indeed I can, Miss Pond."

"Oh," she grimaces, and looks coolly over her shoulder at Roman, "It's Mrs Hawks."

"Yes, dear, of course it is. Give it ten minutes, we'll see if you don't change your mind. Now, are we all sitting comfortably?" Roman sinks back into his seat. His heaviness is half frustration with me and half the Coming of the Dark. I turn to the Little Ghost and tell it_her_ to go upstairs and get the coffee from Pond. "Tonight, three separate and apparently unconnected thefts occurred. But of course, as these things always are, they _were_ connected. They all, for instance," and this I address directly to Rory. Not even to Roman, but to Rory, "occurred on the corner of Fifth and Alameda. Not on any other street, of which I am sure there are many and all with their own names, aren't there, Detective?"  
>"Of course. There's… Ramsay Street and, and… And Albert Square, and Brookside Close. Coronation Street!"<p>

"See? Plenty of familiar names there. Now, the first of these thefts was a wedding ring, stolen from Miss Pond here. My apologies, _Mrs Hawks_. Because after all, she is married. It was, in fact, her engagement ring, by the looks of things, since the young lady in question, if she would just raise her hand-" She's being haughty with me again, so I reach out and raise it for her, and separate out the third finger, "- is still wearing her actual wedding bang. Oh, Mr Detective Pond Williams, isn't it like yours!"

He looks down at his own hand as if it's a third which has all of a sudden flopped out of the end of his arm all pink and new and all.

"It was stolen by one Mr Liam Reilly." I throw the Movie Star hand away and fling my own towards the man at the window, who is still making absolutely sure to smooth out the tape and secure the blotter page entirely, game show host style. "_If he would be so kind as to join us, please, Liam_."

"Mr Reilly is a frankly massive fan of Miss Pondhawks', aren't you, Mr Reilly?"

He looks up, blank and clueless. I nod at him, and eventually, he picks it up and does the same. "Oh, God, yeah, massive. Loved you in… _The Bad and the Beautiful_?"

Mrs Hawks tosses her head and looks away intot he corner. "That was Lana Turner."

"Suffice to say," I cut in, since they're all getting dangerously close to not listening to me, "he's obsessed. Couldn't stand the idea of you being married to anybody else. He thought if he stole the ring, Hawks would think you'd been careless with it, that you didn't love him, that he'd leave you, and Mr Reilly would be the down-to-earth kind of guy to pick you back up out of the depths of despair. Isn't that right, Mr Reilly?"

Over her head, he raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug. I'm making this up as I go, what does he _want_ from me? Mrs Hawks turns round and he starts nodding. Her face curls up, snarling. "People like you are why I have security."

While she's turned, I lean in behind her and look at Detective Roman. His eyelids are starting to droop, but I chance it anyway. "And where were they? Where were they when the window came in? Where were they when you went to the crime scene, hm?" His gaze threatens to slip out of focus so I slam both hands down on the desk and shout as loud as I can. To wake him up, not because it hurt more than I expected. A little bit because it hurt more than I expected.

"Now! Our second thief, is about to walk back through that door with a pot of coffee!" With perfect, even admirable, timing, the Little Ghost does exactly as it's told. "That's for Mr Roman there," I tell her. He accepts it gratefully. No mugs, though, not in a detective's office, so he ends up drinking it from a cut crystal whiskey tumbler. The Little Ghost returns to me, and I put both hands on her shoulders from behind. "_This_ thief is an entirely different breed of thief altogether. It has an immense attraction to _cool_ things, and especially _cool_ things which have special significance to the owner. Much like the wedding ring of Miss… Mrs… Amelia's, here. Which is why we had all, at first, suspected the two separate thefts of being committed by the same perpetrator." It can't see me, so it doesn't argue with me like Liam Reilly. Isn't it funny how things become that bit more bearable when they're useful, like having a filling when the cavity is too painful to stand anymore.

"That's why it, _she_, she, she stole my _infinitely_ cool blue bowtie, as once sort of worn by my lovely wife, and that little metal statuette, which I believe was something a lucky charm to the owner."

We are at about eighty percent completion. By the clock on Detective Roman's wall, it is roughly eight minutes to twelve. And he really is feeling it. If I asked him to get up now, there would be much sighing and groaning in the process. "Drink up," I tell him, and wrap my handkerchief around the tumbler so he can drink it. "Little Ghost, go and get Pond. Tell her to wait downstairs and be ready to run."

It nods, and goes. Liam Reilly's eyes follow it out. He leans forward, as if about to go with her, but I point him back into place. "No, sorry, still need you."

"For what?"

"Because there were four things."

"Oh Christ," he sighs, and tips his head back against the window. The impact threatens to move the blotter paper and he turns to put it back in place.

You have no idea how it's killing me not to ask about that paper, but I have my suspicions about how this game ends. Actually, if I'm wrong, everybody in this room might potentially cease to exist and at least four bodies would be left out in the real world without minds. All rather exciting, really.

"Yes, Liam Reilly, _four. Things_. Things of which there were four. The wedding ring, from Miss Pond, the statuette, from Miss River, the bowtie, from Mr Mad Doctor From Upstairs. One, two, three – now – what was it you were intended to take from Mr Roman here?"

If I didn't know better, if I wasn't absolutely certain that it was something that plumbers just do not do, I'd swear he blushes.

"Ah," I smile. "Oh, right. Mrs Hawks, could I trouble you to stand up, please?" And in case she had thought to get haughty with me again, I guide her up by the elbow. "You'd better go ahead, Mr Reilly, we're not getting out of here intact until you do."

"Christ," he sighs again. He closes the gap between them in one step, lifts up her chin on the second and presses his lips to hers. She throws him off, reels back to slap him. He says sorry over the crack of the connection, over the sound of Detective Roman's chair falling over he gets up so fast, and puts himself between the two of them with his fist cocked back. I stretch past Movie Star and hold it back.

"Now, gentlemen, I know we're all feeling a little bit Humphrey Bogart here, but we can remain civil about this."

"To hell with you, Doctor!" cries the Movie Star, losing all her haughty, ladylike distance, "Punch him, Roman!"

"I'm still on the clock, Mrs Hawks, whatever you say."

"Clock!" I yelp. "Four minutes to twelve!" See, I'm very time aware, I make a wonderful Cinderella. "Mr Liam Reilly, if you would just reach into your back pocket, unless I'm very wrong and one or all of us are all very dead, there should be a sealed envelope. Please let there be a sealed envelope. Really, Mr Reilly, how big can your back pocket be, is there a sealed envelope or not?"

"Yes!" he shouts back, and brings it out. A small and very familiar envelope of an especially vivid blue. I would worry about that, only its three and half minutes to twelve. "How the hell did you know that? I didn't even know that!" I snatch it from him and hand it to Detective Roman.

"Wonderful. We're going to go now. You're going to take this but, and listen to me, because this is important, you are not to open it until midnight exactly. In that envelope is the last fact, the answer to the last question. Midnight, _exactly_, that's the time to wake up. Not a moment before or we're all in grave danger and none more so than you."

"What the hell is this?" he wants to know.

"It's in the envelope." I clap down on his shoulders, a gesture of comfort and hopefully respect. I might not be mad about this stern Detective Rory, but he's a brave man and clever and loyal and he gets the job done, and I want him to remember that when he wakes up.

On my way out, I push the Movie Star gently in the small of the back so she staggers off her heels into the Detective.

"You've got about three minutes, NonPond, I'd kiss him if I were you. Like the world's ending. Which for you it is a bit. Don't worry about it, though, Rory, there's another one waiting. And she'll wait, she's very good at that, three minutes is nothing to her. She did five once!"

Less than three minutes. Liam Reilly is already out the door and now reaches back and drags me through. Which is odd, considering I'd had him down as the villain of the piece, or at least a proxy for it. Why, then, would he protect me?

As we run through the lobby, Pond and the Little Ghost join on behind us. Pond shouts forward to me, "What happened? Is he alright?"  
>"I have a funny feeling he's enjoying himself very much. We'll know at midnight."<p>

At the end of the block, on either corner, there are two phonebooths. They're closer than the hotel room, so I run to one, pack in Amy and the Little Ghost and stand at the door. Liam Reilly is a step behind, but when he stops, he looks to me, expectantly, waiting.

"Yes?"

"…General, I've got nothing but the kiss, I can't get out of here."

"Kiss? What kiss?" Amy says behind me. With any luck she'll have forgotten that one when she wakes up.

"What would you like me to do?"

"...Help?"

"Oh, out of the question. Your boss might not like that. Who is your boss, by the way?"

"Minute to midnight, Doctor!" Pond whines.

"Who sent you?"

Liam Reilly bites his lip. Looks like he might be about to tell me. But behind me, something catches the Little Ghost's attention, and its head whips round. Reilly's eyes, one more time, are following the Little Ghost, and he sees, on the other corner, the light come on in the other phone box, even before the phone begins to trill.

"Sorry, General," he says, and runs for it.

"What's _General_!" I shout after. But Amy has started to dial, and as I step out of the phonebooth, the Little Ghost reaches out and pulls me back in.

We all wake up because the Tardis phone is ringing off the hook.


	16. Chapter 16

Amy, the moment she blinks off sleep and knows where she is, falls forward out of her chair and runs to Rory. This time she tears the crocodile from under his arm. She puts herself in its place in a way that allows no argument and kisses his cheek, murmuring his name. "Doctor, we're awake, why isn't he? What's wrong?"

"Look at him, Amy. See the lips moving? He's reading. Give him a second."

"Reading what?"

"The contents of a sealed envelope."

She's not even looking at me when her voice turns hard, even vicious. Only at Rory. Still not taking her eyes from him. "What did we _just_ discuss, about you being cryptic with me?"

In fairness, I'm not looking at her either, but at the Little Ghost. She doesn't know I'm looking at her. Carefully, she lifts off her mask one side at a time, reaches underneath and rubs her eyes. She's stiff from sleeping over all the corners of the stairs, and her neck hurts because she slipped down below the collar, below the end of the chain, and it's dragged on her. It's as she gets up to fix all of that that she spots me watching.

Her, she, her, she, her, she, her, she, scrabbles backward up five stairs and presses on her mask to see that it is secure.

"I don't know what's in the envelope, Amy, I didn't write it. The trick of ending a program like that safely is to leave it complete. There has to be one fact left to hold the ceiling up. Like the big pole in the middle of a circus tent. That has to be the last thing to come down."

"And the big pole was in the sealed envelope."

"Yes. And we had to get before Rory read the contents of the unsealed envelope and the roof came down."

"But he'll be alright, won't he?"  
>"Yes. It was a bad analogy."<p>

I'm not sure we've ever had a conversation with our backs to each other before. It's not a pleasant sensation and not one I should ever hope to repeat. I have been looking towards my shoulder, but only to indicate to the Little Ghost that I'm not talking to her. I've kept my eyes on her, and she on me.

And now I have to take the sonic from my inside pocket. It flinches, and throws its arms up around its head. She flinches, her arms and head. I'm sorry, that's taking a little getting used to. Because it was hard work, wasn't it, making myself think of it as a thing, and not a being? And it's hard to watch it flinch, and know that that's because I have used the sonic screwdriver as basically an instrument of torture. That I told it the Time Lords were coming to get it and it believed me, when that's the one thing in the universe it really, really needn't worry about.

So what I do now is more important than either of us probably knows. I point out and the collar drops from her neck.

Her hands fly to her throat first. Then she turns to look at the collar, open on the stairs behind her, then back to look at me. Pond, somewhere offstage, is craning to see, but she has other concerns now. I should, perhaps, be enjoying these few moments during which she will not ask questions.

I take a few stairs. The Little Ghost seizes, but does not move. On the stair at her feet, I place the little notebook and the marker, and then I step away. Warily, she stretches forward and grabs them.

'No-chains it. Why?'

See? 'It'! Why on earth is Amy going on at _me_ when she does it herself? Oh, there we are, getting the hang of it anyway…

"Because I don't believe you want to kill me anymore."

It moves to write, settling in, as if this is all going to take a while. Pond, far away, is still murmuring at Rory. I shout at her not to force it, not to wake a sleepwalker. By the time I turn back round, the Little Ghost is holding out the book. 'Not everwant. Him has it been doing for him; not wants kill Little Gost?"

_Not everwant_. I know what I _think_ it means, but that doesn't seem right, or I don't want it to be. We need a more effective means of communication, it seems, but for now, I can only answer it. I say no.

Of course not.

I say that.

"If I tell you not to run away, will you do that?"

She nods, vehemently.

"Will you take off your mask?" Both hands clap up to her face, and the whole arrangement drops down against her knees. Her entire body becomes a fortress for her features. "No, out of the question. Well, alright. If you won't do that, you must agree to answer to anything else I might ask of you. And no lies."

It tips its head on its side, nodding slightly forward to me; 'Say again'. I repeat the last phrase.

She writes down, 'What am l-eyes being?'

And I can't help but smile, "Never mind."

"Doctor!" Pond calls, which I assume to mean Rory is waking up, long last. I turn, but I've taken about one step when a small but very strong hand reaches out and tugs on my cuff. She's holding out the notebook in the other hand.

'Him am not lets other Twohearts get Little Gost.'

How on Earth do I go about teaching personal pronouns to a creature with no concept of spoken language, even of sound?

"_Doctor_!"

"All your shouting is doing him no good at all, Pond!"

So I have to go to her now. Somehow I am grateful for the distraction.

Rory is trying to curl up in my chair, so I have Amy take his shoes off while I try to get in front of his face.

"Rory? Pondicus, are you there?"

"…five more minutes…" And he grumbles something about Howard Hawks that I shan't record, for fear that it might burn a hole in any printed copy with its vitriol.

"Oi! Big Nose!"

Amy, scandalized, cries, "_Doctor_!"

"Well, we have to get him _started_, Pond."

"Try this," she says. She gets down close by his ear, clears her throat, and sings a little tune I've never heard before: "There's Sooty, and Sweep, a panda called Sue-"

Tunelessly, but brimful of idiot joy, up out of the dream, "And little cousin Scampy, too!" He wakes up in a nasal laugh, realizes what he just sang, and instantly sobers. "What? Why are you all crowded round me?"

"Say aah, please," I tell him. He does, and I check around in his mouth, because apparently that's what doctors do, and people don't trust you if you don't do those basic little things. When I pull his eyes open and look in, that's for an entirely more practical reason, though. I'm checking he's there, and that nothing's been dragged out with him. "Rory, what's a 'dame'?"

"…Somebody with an OBE, isn't it?"

"And a 'hoodlum'?"

"How my granny refers to anything in a hoodie and baseball cap."

"How many fingers am I holding up?"  
>"Doctor, that's a crocodile. …Okay, I did <em>not<em> drink this much last night."

Anything he might say next is lost in Amy's shoulder as she throws her arms around him. Then holds him out at the ends of them and says, stern as a schoolmarm, "No more detective movies!"

"Yeah, well…" he struggles for something, anything, to say, when he has no clue about the context of any of it. "No more flirting with Howard Hawks."  
>"What did you think she was going to do?" I say, "Run off and marry him?"<p>

Bells ring for Rory, but they are far in the distance, and he doesn't even comment.

I step away, as I so often do, that they might have their moment of reunion in relative privacy. If they wouldn't so insist on doing these things right here in the console room, we might all be a lot happier, but things are how they are. But when I turn, I see that the Little Ghost is not on the stairs.

'What am l-eyes being', do me a favour, dear me, it's a canny little pretender, could be cutting my coolant again as I stand here – oh… oh, she's at the console. Specifically she is hiding on the far side of the console, watching Amy and Rory with perfect, innocent curiosity. I tap her shoulder and nod her away. Tell her to go upstairs and wait. I won't have her living in the medical room anymore, at any rate. I think the old girl can accommodate her, somewhere. We'll find a little corner to tuck her away in.

"Doctor," Rory says, as I approach again, "I had a dream."

Amy looks as though she's about to explain, but I shake my head at her. So instead she does her best impression of Dorothy Gale and finishes, "'And you were there! And you, and you, and-"

"You," Rory ends for her. And his eyes are halfway up the stairs, following the Little Ghost. "Hey! Stop, turn around!"

"Hold on a minute," and I reach over and rap the stair rail with the sonic. She feels the vibration in the metal and turns.

"You were there," Rory says. "I dreamed you. I've never seen you before except I… I took the mask off you."

I clap my hands and start to set the controls for Earth. "Right, well, now that that's all settled I recommend no bed rest whatever and Abbott and Costello, they're very good, and not like Humphrey Bogart at all, in that they're comedy, not drama, and they don't punch people just for making perfectly platonic if slightly misguided approaches of possible friendship, so it's back to chez Pond with you all, you can raid the DVDs should you so please-"

"No."

"Don't be silly, Pond, trust me, I'm a d… Mr Pond. That wasn't Pond that said no, that was-"

"Yeah," says Rory. And he stands up. With difficulty, yes, and a bare minimum of grace, but he stands. The hand still clinging to last nights still damp tie lifts up and points the index finger at me. He has something to say, and he knows it. It's just that his brain can't quite reach the words. "Yeah, it was _me_," he says again. "We're not leaving you here."

"Don't be silly, I'll be absolutely fine. Off to see the wife, you see. Don't want the parents about for that."  
>"Oh my God, Doctor," Amy gabbles and cringes into herself so tightly I fear for a moment she might disappear entirely.<p>

"Amelia Pond! I'm shocked and surprised you'd even think such a thing. no, I'm off to have my first and potentially massive domestic and I don't know how bad it's going to get, so off the two of you pop!"  
>Rory, to my further shock and surprise, steps up to me. Right up close, toe to toe. And it doesn't matter that he's a little shorter than I am, I feel small. Once more, I can watch his mind grabbing around for the things he knew just a moment ago, in the peace of his sleep, things that should have vanished entirely with the last of the Program code. "I wasn't talking to you," he says. And he looks over my shoulder.<p>

Up at the stairs. At the Little Ghost, who shifts from foot to foot, and doesn't know where to put herself.

"Amy, tell him he needs rest."

Her arms are folded. Still, she is not taking her eyes from Rory. Who is, in turn, looking at me, as though I have done something despicable, or am about to. And Amy, I know, is thinking about me transferring the code data to the Little Ghost's mind and her apparent pain during the process, about my refusal to give up any information on where she came from, and she says, "I'm with Rory."

Being a reasonable being of fairly democratic beliefs, I look to the Little Ghost. She is the object of the vote, and if anyone should decide, it's her. She wraps her arms around herself and looks at her feet.

Which means that I am one vote alone, and the Ponds make two together.

"Fine," I tell them. "Alright then."

[A/N Wow, these are getting long… Again, ladies and gentlemen, I come to the end of my episode and must once more ask your opinion on whether or not to continue. What can I promise about episode four, now… Well, it'll be a little less complicated than that one (I made my own head hurt), it'll feature that big old barney the Doctor intends to have with the lady wife, and Stormcage will probably be my main setting. A bowtie will once more be key to the whole thing. And for all those who had expressed a touch of concern over the Doctor's state of mind re: the Little Ghost, I can definitely promise his reasons will be made much clearer, psychologically speaking, now that he's coming round a bit.

As ever, so, so much love to everybody who's been here and gotten this far. You really don't know what you all mean to me! I'm also continuing my Children in Need fundraising for every review, and I'll let you know what I end up donating on behalf of all you guys! All this just because I couldn't afford to bid on that damn costume anymore! Cursed shopgirl's wage! (I'm counting until the end of the week (25/11))

Extra tenner goes to Pudsey should anybody gets why the Sooty reference went in there!

Hearts,

Sal.]


	17. Songbird 84 Preview

"You drew her a _bath_?"

"She's been here three days, Doctor."

No arguing with Pond, when she gets like this. I can stand here as long as I want and try to convince myself that she did what she's gone and done because she was uncomfortable with the Little Ghost's odour. I _am_ trying that. It's just not going over at all.

No offence meant to the Little Ghost, or no more than usual, but there was a reason the only Tardis pet there ever was was robotic, and a reason that even at that there hasn't been one since. Except that parrot. We discussed that. I don't wish to discuss it again. Point is, Amy's getting attached and I can't say I'm happy about it. Still, she's left it so there's not much I can do about it at this point. She knows that. The way she stands there, arms folded, smiling up at me, she _knows_ she's done that.

"A warning, Pond. Should I catch you braiding her hair, I _promise you_-"

"You know, I never realized, Doctor, just how much of what you say comes phrased as a threat."

It is only very slowly that I turn towards this interrupting voice, this Mr Pond entering from offstage left. Slowly, so that I might contain my initial reaction to said interruption. That gets even more difficult when I notice that this Mr Pond who is, in his own veiled, passive-aggressive way, passing comment on me, is eating a sandwich which has all but inevitably come from my kitchen. Either that or it's been in his pocket since the party at Howard Hawks' house, to which I took him, and the point therefore stands.

"Neither had I noticed, Rory, how little of what you say is ever just coming out and saying it."

"That made no sense," he says, with his mouth full, then wanders on off again.

I am beginning to feel really rather unfairly ganged-up-upon. But since Rory is clearly interested in doing no more than pass remark, I turn back to Pond. "The point is, the Little Ghost is still a prisoner, and still rightly so. And neither of you knows the whole story and I'd just like to point out that _she_ is much happier with the situation than you two appear to be."

"She doesn't know any better."

Those words, the tone of them, the suddenness, it all brings Pond and I both to the console railing. Below, stopped with the sandwich halfway to his mouth, Rory is thinking the same thing we are.

What would he know? And why and how and what did he just say?

"Rory?" and Pond sits down on the edge of the platform, swinging her feet, reaches through to run a hand through his hair.

"What aren't you telling us?" I ask, with no such approach. That would be odd.

And he, lucid and honest, simply says, "I don't know."

"But it's there," I tell him, and he's nodding. "At the back of your mind, or rather it's not there, conspicuous by absence, like a big black hole, like a migraine any time you should attempt to reach into it, but sometimes when you stop thinking altogether it reaches out for you."

"Yes. How do you know that? What is this?"  
>Unfortunately, it is at that moment that the telephone rings. I need to answer it before we can land, so I go to that first. Equally unfortunately, the Ponds follow me. Still asking questions, still niggling, still oh-great-and-wise-Doctor-do-as-we-tell-you and other such ridiculous contradictions they don't even appear to notice. I have the phone pressed to one ear and my hand pressed to the other, and still it's very difficult to have a conversation.<p>

"Hello? Hello? You'll have to speak up, I've got the humans in!"

"Doctor? This is Visitor Liaisons at Stormcage calling?"

"Good. Got my landing code, then?"

"I'm sorry, Doctor, but all visiting hours have been cancelled entirely for today." Pond is trying to drag at my ear-blocking arm and I stop to shake her off.

"Unacceptable. Put me through to Bracewell."

"I'm afraid it's out of the question right now. He suggests you try again next week."

"I'm still landing. He knows that. That happens."

"_Please_, Doctor, it's imperative we maintain total lockdown-"

"Oh," I say, and it is an interested 'oh', a very interested 'oh' indeed, all full of piqued curiosity and just the sense of a sniff of a possible intrigue, which would be nice, haven't walked into a nice bit of old-fashioned good clean intrigue in a while, except last night, and the night before that, and I _talked_ myself into that one with Scone, but anyway, like I said, it's an 'Oh'. "In which case, I'll be right there."

[Back Soon, folks]


End file.
